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

Mitch raised his head to look directly into John’s eyes. “But there’s one thing I need you to know and understand above anything else.”


John opened his mouth to respond. He’d been waiting for an opportunity to tell Mitch that he loved him.


“No.” Mitch dropped John’s hand and held up his palm. “Please, don’t say it, not until you know the truth about me.”


“Truth?” John didn’t understand. Was Mitch…John didn’t know…an escaped murderer or something? No, not his kind, gentle Mitch.


“You’ve probably realised that a few things about me and my past haven’t made sense.”


John frowned. Yes, there had been a few things, but nothing serious. Mitch’s unwillingness to talk about his age, comments he’d made about using Britain’s old coinage. How he’d arrived in the country and…


“Because of who I am, I’ve had to keep a lot of things from you.”


Chapter 74