A Hopeless Romantic Read Free Page A

“Sorry, love,” she said. “What was it?”
    “Is this fob watch too much?” said Yorky, fingering the watch hanging from his waistcoat. “I think it is. I’m not sure, but perhaps it overloads the outfit. What do you think?”
    “Ladies ’n’ gentlemen,” came a bored-sounding voice from a loudspeaker in the back of the room. “Please make your way back into the ballroom. Mr. and Mrs. Lambert are about to perform their first dance. Ah-thann yew, verrimuch.”
    Laura looked wildly around, as if trying to prioritize the many tasks on her mind. She glared at Yorky, who was still waiting for an answer.
    “Yes, it is. Far too much. I totally agree. In fact, it’s hideous, ” she said crossly. “You’d better take it off and throw it away. I’m going to the loo, see you in a minute,” she finished, and hurried away.
     
    Dan, Dan, Dan. Dan Floyd. Even saying his name made her feel funny. She muttered it on her way to the loo, feeling sick with nerves, but totally exhilarated. Laura had got it bad. She knew it was bad, and she knew if any of her friends knew they’d tell her it was futile, that she should get over it, but she couldn’t help it. It was meant to be. She was powerless in the face of it, much as she’d tried not to be. Dan, Dan Floyd, looking like a ranger or an extra from Oklahoma! , calm, funny, and so sexy she couldn’t imagine ever finding any other man remotely attractive. Laura wanted him, plain and simple.
    She had constructed a whole imaginary life for them, based around (because of the Oklahoma! theme) a small house in the Wild West with a porch, a rocking chair—for Laura’s granny, Mary—corn growing in the fields as high as an elephant’s eye, and a golden-pink sunset every night. Mary would drink gins on the porch and dispense wise advice, and would sit there looking elegant. Dan would farm, obviously, but he would also do the sports PR job thing that he did. Perhaps by computer. Laura would—well, she hadn’t thought that far. How could she do her job on the prairie? Perhaps there were some dyslexic farmhands who’d never learned to read properly, yes.
    Her friend Hilary was in the loos when she got there, washing her hands. “Oi,” she said. “Hi.”
    Laura jumped. “Oh. Hi!” she said brightly. “Hey. Great speech, wasn’t it.”
    “Not bad,” said Hilary, who didn’t much like public displays of affection, verbal or physical. She ran her hands through her hair. “That idiot Jason’s here, did you see?”
    “Yeah,” said Laura. “He’s quite nice, isn’t he?”
    “Well,” said Hilary in a flat tone. “He’s okay. If you like that kind of thing.”
    “He’s split up with Cath,” Laura said encouragingly.
    “Yeah, I know,” Hilary said coolly. “Hm. I might go and find him.”
    “’Kay. See you later,” said Laura, and shut the door of the cubicle. She rested her pounding head against the cool of the white tiles. She was stressing out, and she didn’t know what to do. Dan had got to her. The worst bit of all was, she didn’t just fancy him something rotten. She really liked him, too.
    She liked the way he was always first to buy a round, that the corners of his blue eyes crinkled when he laughed, the rangy, almost bowlegged way he walked, his strong hands. She liked the way he rolled his eyes with gentle amusement when Yorky said something particularly Yorky-ish. She liked him. She couldn’t help it. And she knew he liked her, that was the funny thing. She just knew, in the way you know. She had also come to know, in the last couple of months, that there was something going on between her and Dan. She just didn’t know what it was. But somehow, she knew tonight was the night.
    Dan was a friend of Chris’s from university. He’d moved about five minutes away from Laura, round the corner from Jo and Chris toward Highbury, about six months ago—though she’d known of him vaguely since Jo and Chris had got together. In July, Dan had started a