Dream a Little Dream Read Online Free PDF

glad she’d made the effort to jump into artfully frayed jeans and blue cowboy boots and drive to Peterborough. Angie and Rochelle were curled into the brown-leather tub armchairs opposite, hair long and highlights blonde; Angie a sort of sixties’ bouffant puff at the back of her head, Rochelle a cheerleader’s ponytail. Today’s look was ripped jeans and flat shoes—one pair grey, the other a pleasing purple.
    Rochelle beamed over her latte. ‘This is mega. We were beginning to think you were avoiding us.’
    ‘It’s only a few weeks since you came over,’ Liza protested.
    ‘Yes, we go to Middledip.’ Angie cradled an Americano. ‘It’s you coming to civilisation that doesn’t happen.’ She waggled her eyebrows. ‘Give us an update.’
    Liza felt her smile stiffen. ‘A bit crap – I’ve lost my treatment room. I was hardly making enough to get by, but it’ll take ages to find a new place, so I’m not sure how I’m going to pay my mortgage. Or run my car.’ She tried to think her brow flat. But it might have puckered, just a bit.
    Rochelle looked aghast. ‘Are you being made redundant?’
    ‘The self-employed don’t get made redundant – or get redundancy payments. They just go bust.’ Liza sighed.
    Angie’s eyes brimmed with sympathy. ‘Is Nicolas having to close the treatment centre? I saw on
Look East
that everyone is cutting down on non-essentials. I can see why alternative therapies might be losing money.’
    ‘He’s not shutting down.’ Liza had ordered a frappuccino, though the weather was miserable and the caffeine and calorie count must have been enormous. But there was something about the cream whirl and the spiral of chocolate sauce that made her feel better about finding herself in such a complete mess. She ducked her head to the straw and sucked up icy coffee spicules from beneath the flamboyant topping, then stirred slowly, watching the cream and chocolate sauce mix with the coffee slush.
    When she lifted her eyes, Angie and Rochelle were waiting like parents who knew the weaknesses of their child and were creating a silence to be filled with the appropriate confession. She sighed. ‘Nicolas wants me out.’
    ‘What?’ breathed Angie. ‘Liza, you’re brilliant! Has he gone insane?’
    Liza shook her head. She had to suck up a little frappuccino before her throat would allow her to speak again. ‘He heard me swearing at a client – the client asked me out and I seem to have lost the knack of gracious refusal. And Nicolas told me’ – deep breath, swallow – ‘that everyone’s fed up with me making them the butts of my stupid jokes, and now that I’ve moved into driving clients away … He’s got someone lined up who, apparently, has both money and a fresh client list to bring to the party.’
    Silence.
    ‘Was he creepy?’ Rochelle frowned.
    ‘Nicolas?’
    She waved her hand. ‘No! The customer who asked you out.’
    ‘Client,’ Liza corrected automatically. ‘No.’
    ‘Smelly?’
    ‘Ugly?’
    ‘No, he was pretty hot.’ She paused for thought. ‘He’s got this kind of young Kevin Costner streaky dark blond thing going on. Or Eric from
True Blood
– kind of golden. Leonine. With Daniel Craig eyes.’
    ‘Ooh, dirty blond.’ Angie shivered. ‘I love a dirty blond. What else?’
    ‘He’s obnoxiously, quietly overconfident.’
    ‘Like Spike, from
Buffy
?’ suggested Angie, hopefully.
    Rochelle snorted. ‘Spike’s platinum blond, not dirty. How can someone be quiet and overconfident?’
    Liza shrugged. ‘It’s like anything he says, he expects to happen. He did deign to discuss why I didn’t want to go out to dinner with him but it was plain that he thought he could find a way to make it happen. He has a determined mouth.’
    Angie made wide eyes. ‘Pass him my way.’
    Rochelle was more cynical. ‘Married?’
    ‘No,’ Liza had to admit, ‘he’s fresh out of a relationship. But that wasn’t the point. I just didn’t want to go out with