Alpha Billionaire Series
Loving the One I Should Hate Chapter 12

GRANT

Mandy seemed to glow with happiness, all because we stopped at a roadside fair and I bought her a grain of rice. Her fingers never strayed from the pendant for very long. She would say something, gesture, cross her arms, and then her fingers would go to the little glass vial around her neck. I didn't think I had a better morning than today in a very long time. I woke with Mandy warm in my arms. We had a late breakfast that we made together, and then this drive.

"I always forget how pretty it is out here," she sighed.

"It is nice. I don't know if I've ever been out this way."

"There are more dairy farms out here. It seems almost weird to see more land than lake."

"Or urban sprawl." I understood what she meant. Wisconsin has some fifteen thousand lakes. Lake country, the unofficial name for the lake-populated region to the west of Pewaukee, has over a hundred and forty of them in less than six hundred square miles. The greater Chicago area is larger, and it's covered in buildings. "There is more going on around here than I realized. Isn't there?" I asked.

"What's that supposed to mean? You mean that little festival?" She pulled her pendant away from her chest and tried to look down at it. "Thank you for this."

"That little festival. I come up to the lake and do nothing. I don't even go golfing with Scott and Gracie, even though I think she spends all of her time on a golf course. I come up here to relax, go out on the jet ski, grill my own meat. Now I'm wondering, do I think being at the lake means doing nothing because I don't do anything, or do I not do anything because I don't realize there are things to do around here."

"There is plenty to do around the lake. You just have to keep your eyes open," she pointed out.

"Do you think maybe you know what's going on because you've been coming to the lake your entire life?"

She shrugged "I don't know. Do you know about the ski shows? How about strawberry farms? Do you hike?"

With every suggestion, I continued to shake my head.

"I come up, air out the house, and park my ass in a deck chair."

"So, you only come up in the summer?"

"This is only my second summer owning the house. But I don't see myself going up in the winter."

"So, no ice fishing for you?" Her interrogation continued. "You have got to at least know about the Melon Festival, don't you?"

"Yes, I know about the Melon Festival. You can't live part-time next to a woman like Gracie without knowing about the Melon Festival. Plus, it kind of takes over the town end of the lake. I'm not talking about not knowing about the local events you can't miss, but those other things you mentioned. Strawberry farms?"

"Yeah, you can go pick your weight in berries. There are also orchards for apple picking in the fall." She sighed and leaned her head back against the seat.

"I think it's less about knowing what's going on, and more about stopping when you replace something. My dad," she paused and was quiet for a long moment. "My dad could never get anywhere on time because he was always stopping. It drove my mom nuts. Because it didn't matter where we would be going, if there was something that looked interesting to dad, he would pull the car over and take his time. The few vacations we took as a family tended to be road trips. Not to get anywhere and back within a certain time frame, but to see what we could see, and how far we got in the time allowed."

"Sounds like he was a real stop and smell the roses kind of guy. I bet he liked people."

She gave me a little smile that had sadness around the edges. Her father's death was still so new for her. "He did, he was. He would have loved that little festival in the parking lot. We would have been there twice as long because he would talk in length to every vendor there, and to other visitors."

"Sounds like fun," I said.

"Funny thing is, there were times I thought it was stupid boring. Maybe if we swung in, ran through, and left while everything was still buzzing, I'd have thought it was great. But hanging around waiting on Dad to take all the time to do his thing was exhausting." "And yet, you're the one who wanted to stop."

"Don't underestimate the power of kettle corn."

She got quiet again. She watched out the window, one arm wrapped around herself like she was hugging herself. Her other hand was on the pendant.

We drove in silence for a while, Mandy watching out the window while I followed the GPS directions and cast glances at her every few minutes. I turned when the GPS told me to turn.

As we got farther from lake country the land opened up even more so. Fields of cows alternated with leafy green crops I couldn't identify and corn- that I could identify. The sky seemed bigger and bluer.

I noticed Ferme de Fromage before I knew that's what I was looking at. Nestled amongst green rolling hills were a series of low, dark red barns. They weren't the typical barn shape. Instead of being tall and boxy, they were long single-story buildings. I was trying to figure out what they could be. They were too fancy looking for chickens when Mandy perked up and looked out the front window.

"Oh, we're here already," she announced.

I pulled into the well-manicured and landscaped parking lot. It reminded me of wine tasting rooms in Northern California. Only instead of being surrounded by vineyards, the buildings were surrounded by cows in emerald, green fields. I parked and looked over at Mandy.

She started to unfasten her belt and then stopped when she noticed I wasn't moving.

"Well?" she asked. "What are you doing?"

"You're going to run in and buy cheese curds. I'll wait."

"That's not how it works, Grant. Come on," she was out of the car before I could even think of protesting.

Not that I didn't want to go in with her. I wanted to see what she would do. I liked how she wasn't afraid to take charge and order me around. It didn't matter if they were little orders, she didn't automatically defer to me. I could tell she would be a worthy adversary if we ever got into a serious argument. Fighting with Mandy wasn't something that I ever intended to do, but if it came to it, I could tell she would hold her own. She wouldn't back down and start crying and telling me I was being mean.

I was tired of socialite princesses who deferred everything to me. They didn't have their own opinions. And then after a few months, they got angry when I didn't know what they really wanted or what they really liked. Maybe, I should have been looking for a girl by the lake sooner in my life? But if I had, I wouldn't have met this one, and this one was damn near perfect.

"Have you ever seen how they make cheese?" Mandy was asking as she pushed in through a set of double glass doors.

"Sure. They do cheese on those 'how they make it' shows all the time."

"TV doesn't count. We're doing the tour," Many announced.

"Of course, we are," I said. I was only acting slightly put upon. I was happy to trail along wherever Mandy led.

Mandy crossed the visitors' center and asked for two places on the next tour. I reached for my wallet to pay for the tickets. She placed her hand on my forearm.

"It's a free tour. Save your money for buying cheese."

"How much cheese are you expecting to buy?" I laughed.

"It's cheese, Grant. Is there an upper limit?"

We only had to wait a few minutes before the next guided tour started. We were the only ones walking through. It felt less like a factory tour and more like a personal tour of someone's hobby. Cows were not part of the tour. I was slightly disappointed. They were stirring the curds vat when we got to that part of the process.

"And here we have what is essentially our cheese nursery. The cheese is separating from the whey and clumping together into curds. We will then stack the curds and form into our signature cheese wheels," our guide said.

"Your mom wants the cheese like this?"

"Absolutely, it squeaks when you eat it."

"I always thought curds was that cottage cheese stuff," I admitted.

"You aren't too far wrong," our guide started. "Cottage cheese goes through a slightly different heat-treating process, but the creamy portion of cottage cheese is whey."

"But this looks so different. I mean this looks like chunks of cheese in thin milk," I gestured out to where the mixture was being stirred with what looked like a rake. "Again, not exactly wrong. It's essentially the same thing, different types of cheeses, and the amount of whey and the scale or size of the curd is substantially different." "And this is different from regular cheese, how?"

"Are you a wine drinker, sir?"

"I am."

"If freshly pressed grape juice ages into wine, then freshly separated curds are combined and aged into our cheeses."

"That's a good analogy," I said.

"Thank you."

The waxed and stacked wheels of aging cheese were my favorite part of the tour. There was something about the age and power of all those cheese wheels in one place. I wanted one for no other reason than to have possession of one of the gold-toned waxed wheels. At the end of the tour, our tour guide handed us over to a cheese sommelier, for lack of knowing what he was really called, either way, he was the resident expert. We were presented with a selection for tasting and given suggestions for wine pairings. Mandy was giggling at me by the time we were ready to leave. I had more wedges of cheese and bottles of wine than I had expected, while she only had a few pounds of cheese curds.

"What have you done to me, woman?" I asked as we made our way out to the car.

"That's the addictiveness of really good cheese," she teased.

I thought Mandy was being quiet, doing more deep thinking as we drove back. Her deep steady breaths let me know she was asleep. I don't think I had ever seen anything as perfect as that woman asleep next to me. I pressed the call button on the steering wheel. "Call Dylan."