Page 22 of A Summer Scandal

The ghost of a smile passed across his face. ‘You’d know how funny that was if you knew my mother.’

‘So what are you working on at the moment?’ she asked, intrigued.

He paused, and then bent to retrieve something from the lower shelf of his workbench. He held a long sturdy box in his hands when he straightened.

‘These.’

Violet stepped closer as he shook the box lightly to get the lid off, looking inside as he held it out for her to inspect.

‘Are they …’

He finished her sentence for her. ‘Floggers. Yes.’

The box contained about a dozen of them, slender midnight-blue leather handles with a wrist strap, long fronds of tassels. Cal turned and picked up another box, opening it up to show her its contents.

‘Collars,’ she said, her eyebrows raised as she looked at the collection of black studded rings. ‘I wouldn’t like to see the dog big enough to wear those.’

‘You won’t. They’re designed for six-foot men with a submissive side.’

Violet’s mouth formed a perfect O. Floggers. Collars. She was sensing a theme.

‘So you make …’ She tailed off, unsure how to categorise his line of products.

‘Sex toys. Floggers, whips, cuffs, collars, handcuffs, harnesses, masks.’ He reeled it off like a supermarket shopping list. ‘I do bespoke too, if people are looking for something unusual.’

‘I’m genuinely lost for words,’ Violet said, half laughing.

‘It’s just another branch of leatherwork,’ he said. ‘And a bloody lucrative one at that. The family business was struggling – that’s how I got into this originally, trying to think outside the box to bring new business in. There’s a big crossover between the equine and sex industries: crops, whips, stirrups, spurs. It wasn’t that big a leap.’

‘But your parents don’t agree?’ Violet was starting to understand the rift.

‘Just my mum,’ he said. ‘My dad died when I was three, a horse riding accident.’ His melancholy shrug said please don’t offer pity, so she just nodded and held her tongue. ‘My mother has been more than vocal about the fact that she thinks all of this is a disgrace. Dragging the Dearheart name through the mud, apparently.’ He shook his head. ‘These products are officially unwelcome in the factory.’

Violet picked up one of the navy floggers, appreciating the fine leatherwork and the contrasting scarlet stitches. ‘You’re seriously good. This is gorgeous work.’

He swallowed. ‘I’ve trained for years at what I do.’ He put the lid back on the box of collars, looking down for an inch of space to set it down. ‘And business is booming. I’m going to have to move my workshop into the main bedroom at this rate and sleep in the box room like a moody teenager.’

‘There’s really no chance of healing the family rift?’

‘Not unless I go back to making saddles for a living, no.’

They looked at each other across his workbench.

‘Well, we’re going to go down well at the meeting,’ Vi said. ‘You make sex toys and I’m practically a go-go dancer.’

‘The Lido, otherwise known as a den of iniquity,’ Cal laughed. ‘You should probably quit hanging around with me. I’m the black sheep of Swallow Beach thanks to my—’ he broke off to pick up a flogger and thwacked it against the workbench, ‘proclivities.’

Vi nodded. ‘And you should probably swerve me too. In the summer months I wear nothing but hot-pants and feather bras.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Roll on summertime, I say.’

‘I don’t, really,’ she said.

‘That’s a crying shame, Violet.’

Once again, she wasn’t certain whether or not they were flirting. They seemed to dance right along the line between friendship and more, even though both knew that, as neighbours, it was a line to stay on the right side of.

‘Although I have to say, I don’t strut the seafront in a harness and gimp-mask, either,’ he said. ‘Just so you know.’

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