“I have bled for this family and our company,” she told him, her voice icy. “I have given up a life of my own.”

He’d heard it all before. “You’ve done exactly what you wanted,” he reminded her. “Anyone who stood in your way got taken down and thrown to the side of the road.”

She’d lived and breathed the family business for as long as he had been alive and he suspected the obsession had started long before then. Gloria would do anything to promote the Buchanan name. The irony was she wasn’t even a blood Buchanan. She’d married into the family.

“Let’s be clear,” he said. “I’m not doing this for you. I’m only coming in to help because of my brothers and Dani. Hell, Dani should be the one saving The Waterfront. She cares about it more than the rest of us combined.”

Gloria’s eyes narrowed. “Dani isn’t-”

He cut her off with a shake of his head. “Spare me the lecture. It’s boring. Like I said, I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing it in case one of us has kids who care. I’m putting in my four months and then I’m walking away without looking back.”

“You make it sound like a prison sentence.”

“In some ways it is.”

“Callister.”

He looked at her and for the first time she actually seemed old. Frail, even. But he knew better than to be sucked in by her tricks. She was a wily old bird and he’d been pecked more than once.

“Fine. Four months,” she said. “I heard who you hired as the chef.”

Her tone indicated he might have made a deal with the devil.

“She does great work and her name will bring in customers,” he said. “She drove a hard bargain, but I got her and that’s what matters.”

“I see.” Gloria didn’t sound as if she could see at all. She sounded annoyed.

Cal wondered what the old bat had against Penny, aside from the fact that she, Gloria, hadn’t handpicked her.

He knew Penny hadn’t believed that he’d done his damnedest to keep her off his grandmother’s radar when they’d been married. Back then he’d been afraid of what the old woman could do.