On his first night renting a cottage on the Cornish coast, widower John Tennant comes face to face with, of all things, a grizzly bear. Fearing for his life, John tries to convince the animal he isn't worth eating, and is relieved when the bear ambles away. Maintenance man Mitch Benjamin is two hundred years old but doesn’t look a day over forty. As a werebear, he needs to stay under the radar. The new renter is making that difficult. Not only is John attractive, but his vulnerability triggers all of Mitch’s protective instincts. If that wasn’t trouble enough, Mitch is struggling with his inner bear’s desire to befriend John. He knows what his bear is up to, but Mitch doesn’t want another mate. His last one was murdered ninety years ago, and he’s still grieving. John is confused by Mitch’s mixed signals. Physically, Mitch -- with his bulging muscles and hulking frame -- is a gay man’s wet dream come true. But emotionally, he keeps closing down. John discovers more comfort with the magnificent grizzly bear he occasionally meets on his evening walks along the beach. In an effort to help, Morwenna, the owner of the cottages, uses her psychic gifts to give John a message from his dead lover, George. Far from helping, it adds another layer of strangeness to what’s already turning out to be the strangest summer John can remember. Can a well-meaning medium and a determined grizzly bring John and Mitch together? Will Mitch come clean about his werebear nature? If he does, can John accept that a man and bear exist in the same body?

Summer's Lease

But drunk or not, what did one say to a bear? He imagined the books on etiquette so beloved by his social-climbing mother would be silent on the subject.


John was pretty sure bears weren’t native to Britain, or at least hadn’t been for about a thousand years. Maybe Teddy—John suppressed a giggle at the silly name he’d come up with—had escaped from a zoo or a circus or something. Perhaps that meant he was tame, or as tame as such a creature could be. He certainly was magnificent, all raw power, muscle and strength. So animalistic. Jesus, am I getting a bloody hard-on over a wild, escaped bear?


“Uh, I don’t think I’d make a very tasty snack for you,” John chuckled. “But I might have something in the cottage.” He pointed to the open kitchen door behind the bear. “Although I haven’t managed to go to the supermarket yet.” Shut the hell up! John told himself.


With a snort, Teddy shook his head and ambled away, his gait loping but unhurried.


Chapter 3