Free A Mutt in Disguise by Doris O'Connor Page A

the
engine and put his foot down the minute she fastened the seatbelt.
    "You cannot
be serious. We're hardly dressed for a visit to that part of town, and we'll be
late."
    He glanced at her,
and she was once again struck how insanely good-looking he was. When she had
run into him at one of the charity functions her late grandmother had her
attend in an effort to get her mixing with "the right people," she
had been bored out of her mind. Declan had swept her off her feet with his
debonair charm and craggy good looks, his fair complexion such an intriguing
contrast to the dark tuxedo that had accentuated his gym-honed physique. He
made her laugh, and her maternal grandmother had given them her unreserved seal
of approval. She'd been delighted at Anja's having
snared a lord of the realm. Personally, Anja couldn't
have cared less about his status. She was with him because she liked him, not
out of some misguided sense of duty. Her mother and father had married for
love. While Grandma had never forgiven her daughter for marrying a mere bus
driver, Anja's parents' marriage had survived the
test of time. Anja wanted that long-lasting passion
and deep love her parents shared, and she wasn't prepared to settle for
anything less. She'd thought she'd found that with Declan.   He had proven a rock when Gran had passed on,
but since the reading of her grandmother's will, things had changed between
them.
    Much to everyone's
surprise, Gran had left a small fortune in trust for Anja .
She would come into possession of that fortune on her twenty-fifth birthday,
which was this New Year's Eve. It seemed no sooner had Declan found out about
the trust fund, he was making plans to spend it. He had proposed the very next
day, and Anja had shocked everyone by refusing him.
As far as she was concerned it was far too soon to be thinking about marriage,
and lately, she'd had more than second thoughts about her future with Declan.
They wanted completely opposite things.
    She had no
intention of accepting that trust money for herself, and Declan and she had the
first of many bitter rows about her intention to find a worthwhile cause to
settle it on. Anja had done her research, and the
plight of the homeless had always been dear to her heart. She now had the means
to do more than just volunteer, and that's exactly what she was going to do,
Declan be damned.
    "We have to
drive past the shelter anyway, and I promised Mary that I would drop these
around so she'd have them ready for the cake sale tomorrow. It's their open
day, and they're in dire need of benefactors to keep the shelter open. It's the
least I can do, and it will only take a minute."
    She glanced at him
again, hoping against hope that he would see it her way, but he shook his head
and clucked his tongue. "I told you, I don't want you anywhere near those
winos. You could catch all sorts for fuck's sake, and for what?"
    "They're not
all winos, as you'd know if you spent more than five minutes in their company.
They're just people down on their luck, and they need somewhere to stay,
and—"
    "Yes, yes, I
know. Spare me the Mother Teresa act, Anja ." He
interrupted her with a dismissive shake of his hand. "As if it isn't
enough, you have this crazy plan to give them your money. Money that would be
better spent—" He mumbled something under his breath, and glared at her.
    "Better spent
doing what, Declan? Propping up your family's coffers? Is that what you were
going to say?" Her voice rose in annoyance, and she balled her hands into
fists.
    "Yes, quite
frankly, it would be. And why is it so wrong of me to expect my future wife to
want to help out my family?" He stopped at a red traffic light, put a hand
on her thigh, and squeezed. He leaned across, and his hot breath whispered
across her neck as he dropped a kiss on the rapidly beating pulse point there.
His expensive cologne tickled her senses, and Anja shut her eyes in a vain effort to rekindle some form of attraction. Instead,
bile rose in her