Dare To Love Again - Jordan Silver Page 0,48

his housekeeper away with a stern order to find herself in another part of the house so as not to stick her beak in things that didn’t concern her.

From the way she huffed and grumbled, I got the impression that these two had a long lasting working relationship filled with barbs and putdowns, with each one trying to one-up the other. “Come on in, young man; I was pleasantly surprised to hear that you wanted to talk about my old friend. It’s been a while since anyone mentioned poor Sterling.” He shook his head in memory as I followed him to his study.

I’d thought long and hard on my way here about how I wanted this conversation to go. I was coming up with way too many ideas in my head but running into roadblocks with each one so decided in the end that the best way to go was to just come right out and get to the point. If what I surmised turns out to be true, then this one convo might answer a lot of questions for me and set me on the right track moving forward. So first things first…

“Before we get to that, do you know someone by the name of Giselle?” The other man acted as though I’d prodded him with a lightning rod. “What do you know about her? Have you found her? Where is she? Is she still alive?” The questions came hard and fast, one after the other, and what I thought were my stupid farfetched suspicions started to take shape.

“Answer me first, who is she? How do you know her?” He sighed heavily and dropped into a chair before pointing me to another to take a seat. “Giselle was her second name; she was a beautiful child, the apple of her daddy’s eye. Sterling loved that little girl more than his own life. That’s where all the problems started.” He carried on as if no longer aware of my presence in the room.

“Ann was always an odd one, but Sterling wouldn’t hear anything against her, so the rest of us accepted her for his sake. She did her bit to fit in, but it was always obvious to the rest of us that she was playing a part. She came from old money, you see, but her granddaddy had lost most of it with bad business deals and a string of mistresses that he never went out of his way to hide.”

“That’s one of the reasons Sterling’s grandfather was opposed to the marriage. He was afraid that Ann was only in it for the money, something the rest of us only came to find out later. At the time, no one paid much attention, Sterling was in love with the girl, and like I said, we’d all come to accept her for his sake. Besides, old man Sievers was a right old sod.”

I felt the blood race in my veins. ”Did you say, Sievers?”

“Yes, he was Sterling’s grandfather on his mother’s side. His father’s family name is Winthrop, as you know. They, too, had their own wealth but nothing on par with his maternal side.” Sievers is Giselle’s last name. What are the odds that we are talking about two different people?

As if somehow reading my mind, he asked the question that put a huge part of the puzzle together for me. “But why are you calling her Giselle? If we’re talking about the same person, and I only know one person with that name associated with Sterling, her first name is Kynlee. I remember the fights between Sterling and Ann when the child was born. She wanted to name the baby Kynlee, and he wanted to name her Giselle.”

Gordon seemed to get lost in his head for a second until I brought him back around. “You said things changed after the child was born?”

“Oh, yes! I’ve never seen a mother so jealous of her own child in my life. Sterling, of course, was gaga over his kid. He talked her up nonstop from the time she was in her mother’s womb. There wasn’t a day that went by that he wasn’t bending someone’s ear about his pending fatherhood.”

“The trouble started even before she was born, come to think of it. There were many a night Sterling would sit in that very chair you’re sitting on lamenting the fact that Ann didn’t seem to want the baby. At first, it seemed like she was excited to become a mother, but