Their group started drawing attention before they reached the first boutique, which surprised nobody, because Emmeline Bennett could not enter a room quietly when the room already knew her name.

Several of the shoppers were around her age, all of them dressed in that clean effortless style belonging to people who had never once stood inside a shop calculating whether a jacket would ruin their groceries for the month.

Some came from noble houses while others were children of Benders Families dynasties, foreign elites, industrial families whose surnames were probably stamped across banks and hospitals and airports and at least one deeply questionable charity.

A few lowered their heads toward Emmeline with slightly subtle respect, others greeted her with easy familiarity, which told Park their families stood high enough to look across rather than up.

Then their attention moved to him, and stayed.

Marvelous Halo did what it always did, sliding out across the floor without sound, permission, or any basic respect for privacy. A girl leaving a jewellery boutique walked three full steps past her friend before working out that she had stopped following.

Another young woman stared at Park openly, got caught doing it, and looked away fast enough to convert the movement into a minor medical event.

’Still,’ Park thought, pleased. ’Beautiful.’

One young man standing with two girls noticed where both of them were looking. His face closed up immediately, and Park nearly laughed; there it was too—the other half of the curse, arriving right on schedule.

Men did not always require a reason to dislike him.

Sometimes his face got there first and did the paperwork on their behalf.

They entered the first boutique through two wide glass doors that opened the moment Emmeline approached.

The main floor ran away beneath soft gold light, divided into sections for denim, knitwear, jackets, casual shirts, streetwear, athletic clothing, accessories. A second storey curved around the walls above them, reached by a floating staircase of black glass. Racks stood far apart holding only a few carefully spaced pieces each, while enormous digital walls displayed entire collections that could be summoned into private fitting suites with a single touch.

Not fitting rooms—suites, which Park discovered three minutes later when a member of staff opened one for him and revealed a space larger than the apartment he had died renting back on Earth.

It had a lounge, full-length mirrors, a private bathroom, a refreshments bar, two separate changing sections, and enough soft seating to host an awkward family intervention.

He stood in the doorway for a moment.

The boutique staff recognized Emmeline instantly.

"Lady Bennett." The female manager stepped forward, smiling with the polish of long training designed to make billionaires feel that entering a shop was a personal favour to the national economy. "It’s wonderful to see you again."

Behind her the rest of the staff produced matching smiles, professional and calm and perfectly rehearsed.

Then they saw Park, and the smiles changed.

Only slightly—the flash of surprise, the blush one woman failed to intercept before it reached her cheeks. Another staff member looked at Park, then at Emmeline, then back at Park trying to make out how the two were together?

"This is my friend," Emmeline said, glancing at him. "He needs a complete wardrobe."

The manager’s attention returned to Park, and her smile warmed. "Then you’ve come to the right place."

Park looked around the absurd boutique. "I’m beginning to realise that."

She introduced herself as Lane, and she was, Park had to concede, extremely pleasant to look at. Late twenties or early thirties, perhaps with dark auburn hair gathered neatly behind her head, warm brown eyes, a fitted cream dress that had strong opinions about her waist and made no attempt to hide them while hugging roundly what he could make out as above-medium sized but beautifully round boobs with no bra to hold them captive, long legs, and a settled confidence that came from knowing she was excellent at her job and better looking than most of the people who had applied for it.

’Lucky,’ Park thought, with genuine appreciation at her beautiful figure and F-cups boobs with taunt peaks!

’Fuck me!’

Emmeline delivered Lane a painfully specific brief. Clean luxury. Modern. Young. No enormous logos. No colours that swallowed his complexion and not making him look too formal, too mature, too innocent, or too much like somebody’s spoiled son.

Park raised a hand. "I am somebody’s spoiled son."

"Not publicly," Emmeline said.

Damn. Fair.

From that point the shopping stopped resembling an activity and became a controlled invasion. Lane and two assistants moved Park through the store bringing fitted shirts, loose shirts, structured jackets, soft knitwear, premium denim, hoodies, casual trousers, leather, streetwear, and enough separate shades of black for him to work out that black apparently had social classes.

The first real attack arrived disguised as a plain white T-shirt.

Park picked it up because it looked clean and simple and entirely harmless.

"Twenty-one thousand Cels?"

"Yes, sir."

He turned it over carefully and checked the inside. "Where are the diamonds?"

Lane blinked. "There aren’t any."

"Hidden body armour?"

"No."

"Does it come with land?"

Emmeline looked up from a rack nearby and laughed. "Hey stop making jokes?"

She came over, took it out of his hands, examined it for approximately two seconds, and passed it to Lane. "We’ll take twelve."

"I need shirts, not a small financial scandal."

She shrugged. "You’ll stain some."

"With what? Gold?"

Lane’s smile had begun visibly fighting for its life. Emmeline added three black versions and two in cream before Park could recover.

To his own surprise, he barely disliked anything they brought him—partly because Lane knew exactly what she was doing. She took Emmeline’s instructions, studied Park’s build for several quiet seconds, and then selected pieces that followed his proportions instead of concealing them.

Certain shirts sat against his chest so cleanly that even Park had to stop and privately admire the engineering involved.

The rest of it was because he looked good in nearly everything, annoyingly so; even the criminally overpriced white T-shirt somehow turned him into a campaign poster for attractive people demanding tax exemptions.

At one point he stepped out of the fitting suite in a fitted black shirt, dark trousers, and a cropped luxury jacket Emmeline had picked, and the boutique went quiet—the music continued, somebody moved a hanger, a digital display changed collections—but the people stopped talking.

Park looked around. "Did somebody die?"

Emmeline crossed one leg over the other and studied him with enormous smugness. "Several relationships, probably."

One of the girls nearby made a small choking sound. The irritated young man from earlier looked as though Park had broken into his home and rearranged his insecurities alphabetically.

Lane stepped in to adjust the collar. "What do you think?"

"I think this outfit needs legal supervision."

Emmeline pointed toward the suite. "Keep it on the list."

"Obviously."

Lane finished with the collar, then pressed her palm lightly to Park’s chest to smooth the fabric and check how it sat across him.

’Professional. Completely innocent; probably?’

Park looked down at her hand, then up at her face, and smiled—not enough to embarrass her, only enough to let her know he had noticed and did not mind at all.

Lane’s fingers paused for half a second before continuing.

A shame, really. She was not flirting, not properly, and Park had no intention of pretending otherwise. He could still work with it, though.

Especially because Quinn was watching.

He caught that in the mirror.

She stood a few metres off while Emmeline held two jackets against her and argued that the darker one made her look too much like a government assassin. Quinn answered calmly enough, but her eyes kept flicking toward Park, and then toward Lane’s hands every time the manager adjusted a sleeve or measured a shoulder or leaned in to inspect the fit.

’Interesting,’ Park thought.

He turned slightly as Lane drew a measuring tape around his chest, and Quinn’s mouth tightened.

’Well, damn. That’s progress.’

Enough progress for jealousy, apparently. It was not much—a small spark, barely alive, and Park was not stupid enough to confuse it with ownership or certainty or any imaginary claim over her.

But it existed; Quinn had very probably not known it was in her until another beautiful woman started putting her hands on the young master she had spent last night looking after.

Park smiled to himself.

The slope from here looked pleasingly smooth.

He would still need to raise his game considerably, obviously—no man conquered a beautiful, disciplined woman by smiling twice and sending one song, unless the universe had abandoned quality control altogether. But progress was progress.

Lane stepped back and considered the shirt. "This one suits you very well."

Park examined himself in the mirror. "The shirt, or the person wearing it?"

Lane’s professional smile very nearly slipped. "The combination."

"Good answer."

’So fucking lucky me; a gorgeous manager who can’t keep her hands off and a bodyguard quietly discovering jealousy before lunch.’

Emmeline eventually turned her full attention on Quinn. "You’re next."

Quinn went perfectly still. "Young Lady."

"No."

"I haven’t said anything."

"You were about to."

"I’m here to work."

"And you can work in better trousers."

Twenty minutes later Quinn came out of the second fitting suite in high-waisted black trousers, a soft ivory shirt tucked into them, and a short fitted coat that kept her sharp without announcing armed government employee to the room. Her hair had been loosened, falling around her face instead of scraped back under military discipline.

Park held his breath; Quinn was fucking hot.

The trousers sat high on her waist and shaped perfectly her perky round ass and made a long clean line of her legs; the ivory shirt was a bit buggy at her chest area and didn’t need bar.

She looked less like a woman guarding a young master and more like a woman who had been out somewhere expensive with him and would be going home with him afterward.

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