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

Meekly closing the door, Mitch moved to the chair next to John’s, his stomach roiling with nervous energy.


“On second thoughts,” Morwenna said, setting down the teapot, “I think you might benefit from a dose of kava-kava as well. Something told me to get some the last time I was at the herbalist’s.”


Mitch watched his friend pour hot water from the kettle into a glass and add some thick-looking goo. It smelled foul, but he knew it was more than his life was worth to refuse to drink it.


“Thanks,” Mitch said, when Morwenna placed the glass on the table in front of him.


“Drink it down, it’ll do you good.”


“Yes, Mom,” Mitch said under his breath and downed the drink in one swallow. “Jesus Christ!”


John laughed. “That’s what I thought when I had some earlier, but it’s helped.”


“Why, what’s wrong?” Mitch asked, gulping from the large glass of liquorice water Morwenna set in front of him. “I saw your car, are you—”


Chapter 34