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

“I knew it.” Morwenna smiled and clapped her hands, making her bangles clink. “You do have someone watching over you, and I don’t mean the bear, uh, Teddy.” She chuckled. “Although he is a sign.”


“A sign?” This conversation was getting weirder by the second.


Morwenna took John’s now almost empty teacup, swirled it around, and turned it upside down on the saucer. “Let’s see what the leaves have to say.”


“Please, just indulge this little old lady.”


John shrugged and nodded for her to continue. On one of their many trips to Brighton he and George had had their palms read by a gypsy in one of the booths on the front. The woman had made vague references to John having an old soul and various other things he couldn’t remember now. It had been interesting but he hadn’t taken anything she’d said seriously.


Morwenna turned the teacup right side up and peered inside. She hummed. “Ah, yes. I see.”


Chapter 31