GRUB absolutely takes partitions from other physical drives, and so do many other bootloaders afaik.
So, you can choose the OS to boot as normal as you start up your computer. Just install virtually any modern Linux distro after you install Windows or if you already have it installed. The rest will be done automagically.
And in my experience, most laptops with a single drive can accommodate a second one. But YMMV for sure.