Now Is Our Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

jeans, sneakers and tight white T-shirt, she wondered how she’d ever let him go in the first place.  What on earth would this Adonis make of her?
     
    “You haven’t changed,” he smiled, “although maybe you’ve got thinner.”
     
    “It’s an optical illusion,” Claire grinned back. This time it was a natural smile, not the forced ones she seemed to have been pulling most of the day. 
     
    “It is so good to see you.”
     
    “You too,” Claire said shyly.
     
    “Claire Jackson, thank goodness I didn’t let another day pass before seeing you again.”
     
    It was funny hearing him use her maiden name. Although she was now, strictly speaking, Claire Jackson again because her divorce was finalised, she still answered to her old married name, de Klerk. 
     
    “I’m so pleased you suggested tonight,” she said, “because if we’d waited any longer I fear I might have backed out.”
     
    “Why?”
     
    She shook her head.
     
    “I’m not sure,” she whispered, “but I’d possibly have tried to convince myself that it was a bad idea.”
     
    He took one of her hands in each of his and she felt a bolt of electricity shudder up both her arms.
     
    “How could this ever be a bad idea?”
     
    Their eyes locked and despite any resolve she might have had, in that split second, she could feel herself falling for him all over again, just like she had when she was nineteen. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
     
    “Come on,” he said, putting his arm around her and lightening the mood by playfully pinching the side of her waist, “I’ve booked us a table at Nobu.”
                                ----------------------------
     
    It wasn’t a surprise that Jonah had chosen a Japanese restaurant. Sushi is a sportsman’s staple. Athletes need a high protein diet and you can’t get much more high protein than a platter of sashimi. She’d been to plenty of sushi bars with him in his home town of San Diego, but they’d never eaten at Nobu, Old Park Lane.  The sommelier poured them each a flute of champagne. When he’d finished, they clinked their glasses and Claire leaned in conspiratorially.
     
    “Are you aware that it was in the broom cupboard of this restaurant that Boris Becker got a woman pregnant?” she asked.
     
    Jonah raised an eyebrow at her, eyes twinkling, ignoring her piece of tittle-tattle.
     
    “To us,” he said.
     
    “To us,” she echoed.
     
    “I don’t care about Boris Becker and broom cupboards. I want to know about you,” he started. “I want to know how life has been treating you.”
     
    And so, as they ordered and tucked into scallop, salmon and sweet shrimp sashimi, they gave each other a précis of their lives. Jonah had known Claire as an aspiring artist, but Claire told him how she’d decided to retrain as a Nutritionist after they’d broken up, to give her a new focus. And about six months into her course she’d met Anthony at a party thrown by one of her fellow students. A couple of years later he’d proposed to her and, for better or worse, she’d said yes. Then Miriam had come along. Jonah asked to see a photo. Claire bent down to retrieve her leopard skin clutch from between her feet and placed it on the table. “Still loving the leopard skin,” Jonah joked. He remembered .  She took her mobile phone out of the bag to give him a quick slideshow of her daughter: Miriam with a daisy chain around her neck; Miriam as a bridesmaid at Georgia’s recent wedding; Miriam making a sandcastle on a beach. “She’s absolutely stunning,” Jonah complemented. And then he took one of her hands in his and added: “but of course she would be. She’s yours.”
     
    Claire asked him to show her a photo of his daughter, who was called Martha. She, too, was gorgeous and a complete opposite to dark, exotic-looking Miriam. Martha had white-blonde hair which skimmed her waist and Jonah’s broody grey eyes. “She’s a mini you,” Claire