Mary Jenkins
The tempted tourist
CHAPTER ONE
Jill Duncan shifted restlessly in her reclining airline seat, the blanket that the stewardess had given her in New York slipping in a tangled heap down her long shapely legs. For a moment she hovered between sleeping and waking, then fell back into her dream. The loud whirr of the jet engines became the excited buzz of spectators in a crowded courtroom, and she herself was sitting in the defense attorney's chair staring at the prosecutor in front of her. He was shouting, "True or false? True or false? Tea or coffee?" And when she didn't answer he began shaking her arm, repeating, "Tea or coffee?"
Jill groaned, not understanding his question, and then the courtroom abruptly faded as she opened her eyes to stare around the jet in confusion. A well-dressed man seated beside her was gently shaking her and speaking the words she'd heard in her dream, and a wide-awake and smiling stewardess was standing in the aisle with two steaming silver pots and a cart full of cups and saucers.
"Coffee," she muttered, rubbing her eyes and pushing her tousled red hair out of her face. Groggily accepting the plastic tray containing a cup of coffee, a glass of orange juice, and a sweet roll, Jill turned to smile at the man beside her.
"Gosh, I was really dead to the world. Thanks for waking me up."
"Well, I thought you might be hungry if you missed breakfast. You fell asleep before they served dinner last night."
Jill gulped down the hot coffee and began to feel fully awake. She glanced at the man out of the corner of her eye, noting that he was handsome with curly blond hair and blue eyes. His English was perfect, but a slight foreign accent prevented him from sounding like an American. He must be Scandinavian, she decided, and maybe he'd be able to tell her some interesting things about northern Europe. This excited the young redhead much more than his rugged good looks, for she prided herself on being scholarly rather than silly and romantic.
"Excuse me, but are you Scandinavian?" she asked him politely.
"You can tell by my accent?" he said with a little laugh. "I have studied the English language for ten years in school, but still I have an accent."
Jill was afraid she had insulted him. "Oh, no, you speak very good English," she reassured him. "I just wondered if you knew anything about Denmark. I'm going there to live for a year, you see."
"Let me welcome you to our little land," he smiled. I'm glad she's not just another tourist, he was thinking to himself. This girl's built like a bomb, and I'd like to know her better… much better. "Will you be staying in Copenhagen?"
"Yes, I'll be working with the university there," Jill replied.
"I'm also from Copenhagen – I've lived there all my life. By the way, my name's Erik Mortensen."
"I'm Jill Duncan," the curvaceous redhead said, dimpling and then smiling. "Please tell me about Copenhagen!"
Erik stared at her intently, taking particular note of the way her tailored blouse had become unbuttoned in her sleep to reveal two perfectly shaped breasts, their full white mounds thrusting up proudly from the tight-fitting white cotton brassiere. "First I will teach you the most important word in Danish," he smiled, raising his plastic cup of orange juice toward her.
"Skal!"
"Skal?" Diligent student that she was, Jill Duncan had bought Danish records and a language book when she learned that she had received a fellowship to study law in Copenhagen. But that word hadn't been in the lessons.
"Yes, it means 'cheers', and you must hold up your glass, touch it to mine, and look into my eyes," Erik instructed, staring deeply into the young girl's green eyes as she repeated, "Skal!"
"Attention please, ladies and gentlemen. We are now beginning our descent and in a few minutes we will be landing in Copenhagen. Please fasten your seatbelts and refrain from smoking as soon as the sign in front of you is lighted up."
Jill Duncan, surprised that the flight was already nearly over, turned to stare out of the window on her right. A few streaks of pink sunrise lingered on the horizon, but the rest of the sky was clear and blue and promised perfect early summer weather. Far below, she saw the deeper blue ocean with its whitecaps bobbing up and down like small silver-white sailboats.
"The flight seemed so short!" she exclaimed to the friendly young man beside her, obediently fastening her seatbelt as she spoke.
"No wonder!" he laughed. "You've been sleeping like a baby ever since we left New York."
"Well, I didn't want to be dead on my feet when I got to Copenhagen, so I took two sleeping pills," Jill explained. "I want to be able to get right to work."
"To work? I thought you were a student?" Mortensen asked.
"I am, I'm researching criminal law, and I received a grant to study crime in Denmark," the voluptuous redhead replied somewhat proudly. "I consider that work."
"It sounds very interesting. But wouldn't you be better off studying crime in New York? I just spent two weeks there on business, and it seemed much more dangerous to me than peaceful Copenhagen."
"That's just the point!" Jill exclaimed, her voice taking on the tone of a university lecturer as she began to speak of her scholastic studies. "I want to observe just how and why your society is so much less violent than American society, and what effect Danish laws have had on the criminal mentality in your country. The recorded facts show, for example, that when Denmark repealed the laws against pornography, your sexual crimes decreased a statistically significant degree, and…" She broke off in sudden confusion as she realized that her blouse was undone, and that this handsome young Danish man was staring intently at the cleavage of her shamelessly revealed breasts. "Exexcuse me," the curvaceous student stammered in embarrassment. "I think I'll just run back to the ladies' room and freshen up a bit." Her cheeks flaming, she squeezed awkwardly past him, more perturbed than ever as she felt his knees intently pressing against her firm young thighs.
Erik Mortensen smiled quietly to himself as he stared with unabashed interest at her gently swaying buttocks which were undulating in unconscious provocation beneath her short skirt as she hurried down the aisle. Like so many of the American girls he'd met during his frequent trips to the United States, she seemed ashamed and fearful of her own sexuality. Well, she'd change her ideas soon enough in Denmark, he was certain of that. And he was also sure that he'd do his utmost to help instigate that change!
In the tiny toilet cubicle at the rear of the airliner, Jill stared at herself in the mirror. Her cheeks were still burning at the thought of what Mr. Mortensen must think of her – he would certainly imagine that she was one of those cheap girls who believed in displaying their bodies to attract men. Then she tossed her long auburn hair proudly. Well, she wasn't one of those girls, and she would continue to act serious and polite to prove that fact to him. Working slowly so that she'd have plenty of time to regain her composure, the attractive twenty-two year old carefully cleansed her smooth fair skin and applied a light touch of lipstick to her full sensuous lips. Sometimes Jill wished that she hadn't been so generously endowed with good looks, for it only made things more difficult for her. Most men simply couldn't believe that a lovely young girl like herself could be more interested in her scholastic career than in their persistent attention. They invariably tended to stare at her long shapely legs, gently flaring buttocks, and proud high-set breasts when she was trying to discuss something serious with them, and she'd learned to steel herself against feeling flustered and confused by their not-so-very-well-disguised interest in her body. As far as Jill Duncan was concerned, her classically molded face and voluptuous body were merely handicaps to the intellectual development of her mind.