"Another handbag?" Angus asked. "Ye doona have a dozen already?"

Jean-Luc peered through the window and noted which purse Alberto was wrapping. "Good news, Angus. It's one of my lower-priced handbags."

"Och, good." Angus hugged his wife.

Jean-Luc smiled. "Oui, it's only eight hundred dollars."

Angus stepped back, his eyes wide with shock. "Forget the bloody army. I'll skewer ye now."

Roman laughed. "You can afford it, Angus."

"So can you." Jean-Luc smirked at his old friend. "Have you seen what your wife is buying?"

Roman hurried to the window and looked for his wife in the store below. "God's blood," he whispered.

Shanna Draganesti was carrying their seventeen-month-old boy on her hip while she filled his stroller with clothes, shoes, and purses.

"She has good taste," Jean-Luc observed. "You should be proud."

"I'll be broke." Roman watched forlornly as the pile in the stroller grew steadily higher.

Jean-Luc surveyed the showroom. As much as he grumbled about his self-imposed exile, he was pleased with the prison he'd designed for himself. It was nestled among the hills of central Texas.

The nearest town was Schnitzelberg, founded by German immigrants a hundred and fifty years earlier. It was a sleepy, forgotten place with Spanish oaks dripping moss and white Queen Anne homes with lace curtains.

All his stores in America boasted a similar design, but this one in Texas was different, for it included a large underground lair where Jean-Luc would hide during his exile. It was imperative to keep this lair a secret, so Jean-Luc's mortal assistant, Alberto, had reached an agreement with the contractor who'd built it. The contractor was on the local school board, so Jean-Luc agreed to make a hefty contribution to the school district through the upcoming charity fashion show. As long as Jean-Luc was generous with the town of Schnitzelberg, they would keep quiet about the bankrupt store that a foreigner owned on the outskirts of town.