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in the world do you think I'm sending you on your way home? Off you go, King Tanner. You have wined and dined and dazzled me enough for one day. I need time to recover!" Her smile was warm enough and real enough. She really did like the man. To give King his due, his intentions were quite honorable, but she wouldn't make a good wife for him.
    He was forty years old and widowed, with two young children. Tanner wanted a wife who could adapt to ranch life and raise his sons to inherit the empire he was building. The more Rani dated him, the more certain she was that he was beginning to think of her as a potential wife and mother. Soon she would have to gently break off the relationship. King Tanner believed in love and he deserved a woman who could truly love him.
    He kissed her then, taking his dismissal with good grace, and Rani tried very hard to find something special in King's embrace. It was pleasant enough, rather like the man himself, but having reached the age of thirty-two and having enjoyed an active social life, Rani had known others that were equally pleasant. Why was it that the older she grew, the more easily dissatisfied and demanding she became with the men she dated?
    King was a perfect mate for her in many ways, Rani thought wryly as she closed the door on his reluctantly departing figure. Her relationship with him had been serene and comfortable. But then, all of her relationships with men were serene and comfortable or she ended them very quickly.
    Serenity and calm and gentleness were the qualities she demanded in a man, yet every time she found them she seemed to grow dissatisfied. Somehow she grew restless and bored, a part of her seeking something else, something she couldn't name, even to herself.
    It made her uneasy even to think about what might be lacking in her relationships with men. The words passion and excitement might describe what it was that she missed by sticking to safe, comfortable men, but they also conjured up images of the turbulent, unsettling male-female conflict that had been so much a part of her parents' marriage. Those images had haunted too many nights of a little girl who couldn't sleep through what seemed near-violent screaming battles conducted after the children were in bed. Sometimes those battles had begun even before Rani and her sister had been sent off to their rooms.
    As she grew older she was convinced with each new conflict between her parents that divorce was imminent She had learned to live in dread of the day when she and her sister would be taken aside and given the frightening news.
    Yet, that day had never come. The violence of the quarreling had usually evaporated the day after the battle. To that day her parents were still married, and although the battles were far less frequent, Rani knew they could still be just as loud and alarming to an onlooker. It was only as she grew older that she had begun to recognize the deep passion between her parents, which not only gave rise to the conflict but also put an end to each battle. But that degree of passion was something that still frightened her. She had resolved before she was out of her teens never to become involved in a relationship that resembled mat of her parents. The little-girl fears had never quite died.
    But that didn't mean she didn't long for love in a softer, safer form. King Tanner would be able to provide the kind of love she wanted, Rani told herself. He was a nice man who would always take care of her. In return he would expect a well-run home and children.
    He also had the right to expect a reasonable degree of love and physical affection in bed, and Rani knew she would have a hard time faking that for the next fifty years.
    It would also be damn hard to learn to fake a love of horseback riding, she thought with a grimace as she slowly began to undress. She had been aching all afternoon from the effects of the QE2. The effort of being relaxed and scintillating during the rest of the day for the