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 bet George would have liked you, too. Though he might have had a harder time accepting that you were real, that you wouldn’t hurt me.” John sighed. “Maybe he might not have liked you because he’d have seen you as a threat, to my safety I mean. Sometimes his over-protectiveness got a bit much, but…” John let out a sob. “I’d give anything to have it and him back.”


The bear rose to a sitting position, which put his head just above that of John’s. Nuzzling the man’s neck, the bear tried to tell the man that he wasn’t alone. Even though George had passed on, he, the bear, would watch over John, had in fact been doing so for the past few days.


John wrapped his arms around the bear’s neck and buried his face in the animal’s thick fur. “I knew you’d understand. That’s why I wanted to see you again, ‘cause I knew I could talk to you and you’d listen.” John pulled back and delivered a soft kiss to the bear’s nose.


Chapter 45