“Have you packed such a dress on this cruise? You could wear it to dinner this evening with me.” Drew swung his legs around so he was sitting and looking directly at her. His gaze inched from the tips of her manicured toenails, up her shapely brown legs and lingered on her flat stomach. Her string bikini left little to his imagination. His eyes traveled up farther, resting again, then finally locked onto her unblemished face. “You will join me for dinner, won’t you, Jillian? I’d hate to dine alone on my vacation-the first real holiday I’ve taken in three years.”
She didn’t answer him right away, knitting several more stitches so she could get to the end of a row. She favored a mix of plain stitches in the Continental style, using circular needles.
“What are you making? A ski mask? It looks like a ski mask, but you’ve left no holes for the eyes or the mouth.”
“It’s something like a ski mask.” She finished another row then put the piece, yarn, and needles in her beach bag. She rose from the lawn chair and rolled her shoulders, working a kink out of her neck. Then she stepped to the railing and let the water spray her. “Drew, what time is dinner tonight?”
His smile reached his eyes, and he quickly joined her at the railing. Drew was tanned, even all over from hours surfing in the sun. He’d explained that as a professional surfer he regularly “hung ten” up and down the coast of California, but also worked Hawaii once in a while. He wasn’t sure she was paying attention, and he intended to mention it all again at dinner and afterward, impress her by telling her about the size and ferocity of the waves he’d ridden. Maybe he’d show her one of the pictures he brought, tucked in his duffel for the wow factor.
“The first dinner service is at eighteen hundred, Jillian. So…you are joining me?”
“I’d be delighted.”
She wore a black satin dress with spaghetti straps. The material clung to her, stopping midway down her thighs. The black leather shoes she wore were toeless.
They had a table by a window, and though it was set for four, they were alone for the early meal.
“She wouldn’t go eight stone.” Jillian looked at a reed-thin waitress threading her way between tables. “Nine stone, at least,” she said of a waitress who was considerably more voluptuous.
“So you travel a lot, Jillian?” Drew poured her a glass of wine, a Merlot from a Sydney winery.
“In the past few years, sure. I’ve had to-for work.” The surfer was so easy to talk to. Too busy with work, she hadn’t enjoyed a man’s company in so many months.
“I travel for work, too, catching the best waves. California. Hawaii. You?”
“ England, Australia, South Africa.” She rattled the countries off like items on a grocery list. “ Japan, South Korea, India, Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, and Bangladesh.”
“I’m impressed. And now with this cruise, Singapore and Malaysia. We dock in Penang tomorrow.” He waited until she nodded that the wine was suitable, and he poured more. “So what sort of work takes you around the world?”
Her shoulders sagged for just an instant, accompanied by a sigh. She usually didn’t discuss what she did for a living, but he was so very easy to talk to. Besides, if she told him the truth, he’d either be repulsed and leave her alone or accept her profession and win a second date. Either would be acceptable.
“I hang people.”
Drew had been sipping the wine, but now sputtered it up. “S-s-sorry. Did you say that you hang people?”
She ran her thumb around the lip of the wine glass. It hummed, showing that it was made of crystal. “Yes, I hang people.” Jillian took a swallow of the wine and held it in her mouth. The taste filled her senses. She studied him over the rim of the glass. He seemed honestly curious, though perhaps morbidly so. Earlier she’d put him at a little more than eleven stones. But he had broad shoulders and probably went an even dozen. All of it muscle. “Look, Drew, mine is a very old profession. The Persians invented it more than twenty-five hundred years ago-for men convicts. Women were strangled at the stake, for decorum I suppose. And the English embellished it, starting way back with the Saxons.”
He cocked his head.
“The English, for especially heinous crimes, sentenced a person to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. They were careful with the knot and length of rope so the criminal wasn’t completely asphyxiated. They needed to spare him for the worse ordeals. Barbaric. A simple hanging is the only way to go. You see, hanging is spectacular, visual, and should serve as a deterrent. It has none of the blood a beheading or firing squad would bring, and it is inexpensive and relatively painless…if done properly.”
Drew shuddered, but gestured for her to go on.
“I first practiced my craft in the States, learning it from my father, he from his father. My dad taught me the history of it, too. In Britain, more than fifty-five hundred were hanged between 1800 and the mid 1960s. In the United States, about thirteen thousand men and five hundred women were hanged from the early 1600s to the mid 1990s. The first man ordered hanged by a proper court of law in the States was Jose Forrni on December tenth in 1852. The second was William Shippard, hanged on July twenty-eighth at the Presido two years later. They said ten thousand came to watch that one. In 1859, Tipperary Bill-William Morris-was hanged. A little more than a year after that, James Whitford. John Devine, called The Chicken, killed James Crotty and was hanged in May 1878 for it. And…”
“You’ve quite the mind for details, Jillian.” His hand shaking slightly, Drew refilled her wine glass.
“But there isn’t enough work in the States anymore. Through the years fewer and fewer states allowed hanging. Delaware stopped the practice a few years back. New Hampshire permits it now only if a lethal injection can’t be administered. And Washington state…an inmate has to ask to be hanged, otherwise he gets the needle.”
“So it’s like being laid off, huh? Can’t hang folks in America.”
She giggled at that notion, and at the wine which was going to her head. Yes, Drew was definitely a dozen delicious stone. “Hanging is still the most prevalent form of execution in all the world. More than a hundred people were hanged in about a dozen countries in 2002. A year later only a few less. In 2004…”
“So you’ve been traveling the world just for work?”
She drained the glass and let him pour more. “For the past year I’ve been cruising to countries where they still hang people. Well, I had to fly into Botswana and Zimbabwe. And I passed on Iraq. Saddam ordered a lot of hangings, but I wanted no part of that. Some other Middle Eastern countries, I flew into them, too. Hard to cruise into a desert. Ah, all the places to go and people to kill.” She leaned back in the chair as the waitress-nine and a half stones-delivered their lobster tails. “It’s a respectable profession, Drew, hanging.”
He took a piece of lobster and dipped it in butter. “Probably more respectable than mine. People think surfers are bums.”
“Hang ten?” She giggled. “I’ve hanged a lot more than ten. I think I hanged eleven just last year alone.”
Drew nearly choked on the lobster. He washed it down with a big swallow of wine and waved a hand. “Would you bring another bottle?”
A passing waiter, hefty for his short frame at fourteen stones, nodded.
“This bothers you, doesn’t it, Drew?” No second date, she sweetly pouted.
“N-n-no. I find it fascinating, Jillian. Truly.” He was quick to take another bite of lobster and finish the last of the wine. He kept his gaze on the table setting. A moment later, the waiter returned with a new bottle. Drew didn’t bother to sniff the cork. “Terribly fascinating, dear Jillian. D-d-do you throw the lever that sends them dropping through the gallows floor?”
She forked a small piece of the lobster and took a delicate bite. She closed her eyes and savored it, then took a second, this time dipping it in butter. How many people ordered lobster for a last meal, she wondered. “No, not at all, Drew. I couldn’t stomach that, actually flipping the switch so to speak.”