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

“There were too many clothes for one machine so I had to use two. Oh, and your silk shirt, the one that got wet last week?”


“It’s at the dry cleaners. I’ll collect it tomorrow.”


“There was no need. I’m sure I could have just rinsed it out here in the sink and—”


“And it’d be a bitch to iron. No, best leave stuff like that to the experts.”


“True. But to save you going into town again tomorrow, I’ll ask Morwenna to collect the shirt.”


“No problem. It’ll give me something to do, and I have a couple of pairs of trousers being dry cleaned, too. You can come with me to carry them if you want?” John waggled his eyebrows to show Mitch he was just teasing.


Chapter 39