Thorne spins out of control at The Beach Club; Ridge and Ashley take it to the bedroom; Stephanie tosses Brooke to the curb
Everything is peachy at Eric's & Stephanie’s house, as the kids run and play. Stephanie is happy – playfully bantering with Eric – saying she’s missed the chaos of having children in the house, and tells Eric she’d love to get Ridge and the kids to stay with them at their house. The subject turns to Thorne and Stephanie wonders aloud if Thorne seemed “okay in the office today.” Eric says yes, he thinks Thorne is having fun. “After the year he’s had,” Eric says, “I think it’s about time.” Stephanie says she thinks Thorne’s date, Alanna, is nice, but beneath him. Eric tells her to just let Thorne have his fun.
At The Beach Club, Taylor and Nick are getting settled at their table. Nick gets ready to tell Taylor why he’s asked her to meet him there and she says she already knows about him hiring Brooke. Nick asks Taylor how she feels about that, and she says, “It depends on why you did it.” Nick tells her that Brooke is the best in the business and that he hired her also in part because she’s a friend in need. Taylor says that other women would tell her that she’s crazy for letting her husband work alongside his ex and all those models, but their conversation is distracted when Taylor notices Thorne living it up with Alanna at the table behind them.
Thorne and Alanna are still partying down at Jean Claude’s preview at The Beach Club. Thorne is drinking like crazy, downing one champagne after another and visibly getting wilder as the evening wears on. Models are cruising around the room, showing off dresses, each of them stopping at Thorne and Alanna’s table. Alanna excuses herself from the table and Thorne is having a great time – eyeballing and flirting with the roving models – when suddenly a blonde model stops at the table. Thorne looks at her and sees Darla’s face on that model. After a second take, the model’s face becomes her own again, not Darla’s, but Thorne is visibly shaken. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a bottle of pills. Once again, he tosses a handful of them into his mouth and washes them down with champagne.
Back at the office, Brooke is closing things up for the night and having a nice chat with Rick. Brooke tries to recruit Rick to come work with her and Nick. Rick turns her down, saying, “…although it would be nice being able to show up to work every day without having Ridge in my face all day long”. Rick expresses concern about Brooke’s decision to work alongside Nick, but Brooke assures him things will be okay. Brooke then tells Rick about almost kissing Nick on the boat, but assures him that they’ve agreed that it’s “never going to happen again.” Rick tells Brooke that she’s in denial if she thinks she can work with Nick and not act on her feelings. She responds, however, that she’s got her priorities straight. First, she’s going to worry about the kids, then her career, and then her love life last. They say goodnight and Brooke gets ready to leave.
Back on Ridge’s couch, Ashley finally opens the box he’s put on her knee. Inside she finds…earrings. She tells Ridge that the thought of it being a ring was terrifying, saying, “Just for the record I am a little relieved that it’s not something else.” She tells him that she doesn’t want to rush things with him – that she just wants to take her time and savor every minute with him. Ridge tells her that he thinks they’re on the same wavelength. They begin kissing and move into bedroom. Everything is bliss until the phone rings. It’s Brooke, telling Ridge she wants to stop by to say goodnight to the kids. He tells her she can’t do that because they’re at Stephanie’s house. Brooke gets huffy with Ridge, in part because he sent them to Stephanie’s house rather than to hang out with Brooke, even though he knows how much Brooke wants to see them. She also tells him that sending them to Stephanie’s house is going to make things worse and then adds, “It’s too bad for her because I am going to see my kids.” Brooke hangs up on Ridge, who lays there and stews. Ashley tells him to go to his mother’s house to take care of things, but he won’t go. Instead he calls Stephanie to warn her that Brooke is coming over.
Shaken by “seeing” Darla’s face, and spurred on by booze and pills, Thorne gets ready to leave The Beach Club. But first he stops at Nick and Taylor’s table to “congratulate” them. But he’s more than a little wasted and gets surly with Taylor right away. “You think I’m enjoying myself,” he says. “Maybe it looks that way. Maybe it makes you feel better to think it. But nobody makes me as happy as Darla. And she’s gone.” He goes on to accuse Taylor of never loving him, and then spouts that he knows Taylor feels guilty for what she did. Things get more and more heated and it almost comes to blows between Thorne and Nick, as Nick stands to defend Taylor. A drunk and hostile Thorne is escorted out of the party.
Brooke shows up at Stephanie’s house, asking to see the kids. But Stephanie won’t let Brooke in, telling her that it’s too late and she should go home. She tells Brooke that she has no right to see her kids – the court said so – and from now on if she wants to see the kids she has to make an appointment. Brooke tells Stephanie that she knows that Stephanie has the kids over there so she can engineer getting Ridge and Ashley together. Stephanie gets nasty and tells Brooke not to ever step foot on the grounds again or she’ll get a restraining order and have Brooke arrested and then make sure that Brooke’s kids are taken away forever. A screaming and fighting Brooke is escorted to the curb by security.
