When asked by the maître d’ for a reservation, he gave him the name “Grant” and was told the other person in the party had just arrived.

Grant followed the tuxedoed man through a dining room populated by Upper East Siders and moneyed Manhattanites eating omelets and closing deals. As they neared the table, Grant slowed, filled with sudden trepidation.

Even with her back to him, it was clear the woman seated at the table was attractive, and from the way she carried herself, someone to be reckoned with.

“Enjoy your breakfast, Mr. Grant,” said the maître d’.

The woman turned and her exquisite jaw almost hit the floor.

“What the hell . . .?”

Grant noticed that she’d lost some of her British accent.

“Don’t blame me—you can put that all on your uncle,” he told her.

“That doesn’t mean you had to go along with it, Dad,” said his daughter.

Chapter 6

6

No matter what Grant or Allison tried, Rachel wouldn’t stop screaming.

Barely three days old, but already possessing quite the set of lungs. Grant didn’t remember their newborn daughter uttering a peep while cradled in Allison’s arms in the hospital room or watching her through the nursey window.

She saved it up for the cab ride home. Grant was afraid the driver would drop them off on Hyde Park Corner because he couldn’t stand the racket.

The baby kept it up upon entering the flat. No matter what the new parents did, she proved inconsolable. They tried rocking. Cooing. Singing lullabies. Grant even recited nursery rhymes he remembered from childhood. Nothing worked.

Then Grant turned on the big portable radio in the living room hoping to drown out the screaming child and keep the neighbors from making child abuse claims.

It was tuned to the oldies station Allison found so tiresome.

The Beatles’ “She Loves You” began to play.

Rachel not only stopped crying—she began gurgling with pure happiness.

Grant thought, Oh my, she’s a lovely British lass through and through.

From the moment she entered the world, Rachel and Allison were as close as a mother and child could be. But on that wintry morning when Lennon and McCartney calmed his baby girl, Grant’s heart had been stilled when Rachel stared up at him with adoring sky-blue eyes. When recounting the story over the years and asked if that was the moment he fell in love with his daughter, Grant would smile and answer, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”