Book excerpt: Steph Haas cares. For the patients in the nursing home she runs, for her family, but most of all, for her partner Lilou, whom she adores. Life is good when she’s pleasing her woman even if it has Steph playing über butch to Lilou’s demanding femme. For them it works ... until suddenly it doesn’t. Annika mistrusts all women, yet longs for a steady relationship. After unsuccessfully throwing herself at yet another prospect, almost ruining her career in the process, Annika’s boss forces her to take a vacation. Having nowhere to go and no one to go with, Annika is grateful when her gay friend Leo suggests she join him and his partner on the very trip to the US Steph was supposed to take with Lilou. Knowing Annika and she will be the only non-couple on the Gittie-Up Ranch, Steph is determined to make the best of an altogether bad situation. But traveling with Annika isn’t easy, especially when the maddening woman rebuffs Steph’s attempts at being nice. Instead, Annika drools incessantly over the resident lesbian, a butch cowgirl named Jesse. Somehow they still become friends, with Steph valiantly fighting her physical attraction to the gorgeous femme, only to give in when Annika suddenly shifts gears and they land in bed together. So what? It’s just a vacation fling. Nobody cares, right?