Wait, was he planning on cooking them again? Even I knew they were obviously overcooked. But I did as he said, and while I continued chopping, he added some dark chicken meat that was shredded into little pieces. “What are we making?”
“It’s one of my specialties,” he said confidently. “It’s very popular—you’ll see.”
I sincerely doubted I would, but I kept that to myself.
Then Brady took a plump, golden brown loaf of bread out of the oven, and I forgot about everything else. By the time he retrieved the second loaf, I was practically salivating. “That smells incredible.”
He grinned. “I bet your Door Date doesn’t deliver fresh bread all that often.”
“DoorDash. And no, it doesn’t.”
I ignored my task as I watched him expertly extract the loaves from the pans and put them on a wire cooling rack. “Any chance we can just dive in right now?”
“Not unless you want a burned mouth.”
I licked my lips. “You know, some places only give hostages bread and water. I have a feeling I wouldn’t mind too much if you did that here.”
He shrugged, a small smile on his face as he stirred what looked like gravy. “Any chance you could consider yourself a guest rather than a hostage?”
In both cases, it meant I was stuck somewhere I didn’t want to be for a week. “What’s the difference?”
He looked pretty cute as he cocked his head to the side, thinking it over. His hair was short, which normally I didn’t like on a guy, but it worked for him. “Guests get decorative soap. And we trust them with darts and pool cues in the rec room.”
“Hmm… you might not want to do that, yet.”
“Duly noted. Had me that pan, will you?”
I carefully grasped the edges of the pie pan and held it out to him. He ladled gravy into it and then added some mushy meat from a different pot. Yuck. If ever there was a night to fill up on bread, this was it.
Speaking of bread, Brady cut off the heels of one loaf and set it on my cutting board. “When that’s cool enough to touch, shred it and stir it into the mix.”
The concoction was nearly making me sick to my stomach, which was odd because everything had smelled so good when I first came in here. But I did what Brady said. “Now what?”
“Now nothing. I’ll put it in the oven so it doesn’t get cold before it’s time to serve it. Will that be enough for you and Penny?”
My stomach recoiled, but I told him it was. Since I doubted we’d eat a single bite, it would last for a very long time.
Brady laughed. “Too bad, because it’s not for you.”
I sagged against the counter in relief. “Thank god. Who’s it for?” I eyed the nasty-looking stuff again. I wouldn’t feel bad making Gideon eat it.
“It’s for the barn cats.”
Oh.
The pan of slop looked less gross now that I knew its purpose. “Why do you have barn cats? Are there mice out there?”
Brady took some kind of dark roast out of a pan and expertly transferred it to a waiting platter. “There have always been some cats around. My gran used to feed them. But now there are a lot more. I think cats from neighboring farms come over some nights and pretend to be strays.”
“Sounds like they like your cooking.”
“They do tend to eat it pretty quickly,” he said with a shrug. “Which is good. That way they can be on their way before the coyotes come out.”
“Coyotes?” I echoed in disbelief. We were two hours outside of Chicago, not in the Wild West.
“Yeah. They seem to have a set hunting route, and they usually get here pretty late. That’s why I feed the cats around eight. Want to come with me when I take the food out?”
The honest answer was yes, but I hesitated. “Are you sure the coyotes won’t be out then?”