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

They would eat lunch, then most of the afternoon would be given over to studying. Their evenings were spent either at the college with supper out afterward or in one or the other’s cottages just talking, cuddling and kissing. The nights were the best, however. For the past week John had slept in Mitch’s bed every night. They’d gotten up to many things between the sheets, but John hadn’t brought up the subject again of going all the way.


Looking down at his naked body, Mitch felt Teddy grow restless. The only problem with spending so much time with John was that Mitch didn’t have many opportunities to shift. He could go days without assuming the shape of the bear, had had to do so on a number of occasions, most notably during the passage over to England. But Teddy was a big part of Mitch and he knew it was unfair to keep the bear hidden away. He also knew he hadn’t been fair to Teddy about John. Teddy loved John, just as much as Mitch did.


Chapter 59