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

John decided to explore a little more, so he held his arms out again to feel for the wall. Before he reached it however, his foot hit something soft. He yelled, his mind’s eye filling in the missing visuals of a dead body. The teenagers were obviously into things much more sinister than he’d first imagined.


Mouth dry and heart about to beat out of his chest, he got down on his hands and knees and inched his way toward the body.


The first thing his fingers came into contact with was carpet. Maybe the corpse was wrapped in it. Careful not to disturb the evidence too much, John felt along the rough material. It was a bag. Too small to contain a body, although he wasn’t giving up on the idea completely: it could be that of a child. But he soon abandoned that notion, as the shape was all wrong.


Feeling foolish for his outrageous thoughts, John decided he might as well examine the contents of the carpet bag. It might be stolen treasure or…


Chapter 28