Free Second Chances: The Bold and the Beautiful by Ros Baxter

bread. But they’d now been sitting and talking for over an hour, and she was now attacking a bowl of aromatic vichyssoise with gusto. It wasn’t a cheeseburger, but it sure looked like it was hitting all the right spots.
    “What are you grinning at?” Steffy raised an eyebrow at him as she wiped the corner of her mouth delicately with a starched white napkin.
    By tacit agreement, they hadn’t discussed Phoebe. Not yet. Rick wanted Steffy to have a moment to relax, after all she had been through. He knew better than most that there were few relaxed hours when you were a Forrester, let alone on day like today. So he asked her about her time in Paris—what she had seen, her impressions of the shows, the food, the people. He had forgotten what a good storyteller she was.
    Relaxing on her second glass of wine, Steffy seemed to come alive talking about the country. “Monsieur Duchamps and his wife were the caretakers of the little hotel Dad set up base in. They’re so sweet, treated me like their granddaughter.” She paused, her soup spoon en route to her mouth. “Maybe a little too much, you know?”
    He shook his head, wanting her to continue. He just liked listening to her. “No. How do you mean?”
    “Well …” She wiped her mouth delicately with the napkin. “They couldn’t cope that I wasn’t there with some man. They made it their life mission to find me a good French boy. Apparently I was—” Steffy pursed her lips and affected a very decent French accent, “‘—a beautiful girl badly in need of a French lover.’” She rolled the last R authentically. “They proceeded to trail a procession of eligible young men through the bar, hoping to catch my interest. It was sweet.” She took another sip of her soup. “Until the day they introduced me to one particularly charming comte who tried to lure me back to his castle in the French countryside. When he realized I wasn’t so keen, he was outraged. He said: ‘Mon Dieu, don’t you know who I am?’” She threw her head back and laughed and Rick found himself greedily drinking in the sight of her long white neck. She looked good when she was relaxed like this.
    She looked good any old way.
    “Did you tell him who you were?” Rick didn’t want this to stop. Not her laughter, not the story, not the day.
    “You know,” Steffy said, finally sighing and pushing her soup bowl away. “I really don’t think it would have mattered. The French just aren’t that impressed by Americans, whatever they’ve done. I’m pretty sure his castle would have trumped Forrester Creations any day. At least in his own mind.”
    As they laughed over the anecdote, Rick leaned forward and grasped Steffy’s hands. “She would have loved to see you laughing like this.”
    There was a moment of silence between them. They both knew what he was doing—it was time to discuss the elephant in the room. But he didn’t want to press her. “It’s okay, Steffy,” he said, reaching over to stroke one of her hands. “We don’t have to talk about Phoebe. Not if you don’t want to. We have all the time in the world. I’m not going anywhere.”
    She nodded at him. “How was it?” She squeezed his hand as she said the words. “How was it for you today, at the cemetery?”
    Rick hadn’t expected this. He had wanted to be there for her, to give her some support. Let her talk. He had carefully tucked away his own grief as he had walked back from Phoebe’s grave after giving her the perfect daisy chain.
    He looked at her carefully. “It was … confronting,” he said. “I’m not like you, Steffy. Maybe not as strong as you. Usually, I avoid this day. I keep busy, or I get drunk.” He gave a small smile. “Often both.”
    She nodded, and squeezed his hands again. “But this time I decided it was going to be different. I was going to be different. I was going to be better.”
    “Tell me,” she said, widening her eyes to encourage him to continue.
    He wasn’t sure how