The writing isn’t on the wall in this case, it’s on the pink-slip that Bold & Beautiful powerhouse Steffy issued to Hope: Matthew Atkinson’s Thomas is going to be back on the scene quicker than he can say, “Will you marry me?”

How can we be so sure? Hope is desperate to keep her job. Not so desperate that she’d tell Steffy that she was interested in a made-up guy named George Glass and not Finn — c’mon, kid, you had an easy out! — but desperate nonetheless. Carter is equally eager to undo the damage that has been done. But how? By reuniting the team that made Hope For the Future such a success in the first place: Hope and Thomas.

Picture it: Carter floats the idea to Steffy, and she’s like, “Oh my gosh, that’s a great fix!” Only the co-CEO has one little tweak to make to the plan. She wants Thomas to take over Hope For the Future… and leave the line’s founder out of it. “But it’s Hope’s legacy,” we can just hear her aunts saying.

“I know,” Steffy could reply. “And this gives us a way to honor Hope’s legacy and even grow it while at the same time not having to deal with the remake of The Slut From the Valley skanking around the office in nighties. Win/win!” (Since Hope did pursue Finn and even plant an unwanted kiss on him, Steffy would have a point, too.)

Naturally, Ridge, Taylor and Steffy would be only too happy to have Thomas home. And since he’s deeply devoted to Paris, it shouldn’t be a temptation to him at all, being in the same city as Hope, right? Heck, once he hears about the way she “threw herself” at Finn, he’ll be extra glad to be rid of her. At first.

Here’s where the fun part would come in. While Paris plans her Forrester-living-room wedding to Thomas, he finds that his designs don’t have the same spark without Hope serving as his muse. Though he knows that it’ll get him in hot water with his fiancée if she finds out, he manufactures excuses to bump into his ex, and boom! Suddenly, his designs are amazing again.

No dummy, Carter would wonder about the chance-ness of these encounters. But he wouldn’t bristle, sensing a rival in his would-be significant other’s vicinity. “Carter just wants Hope to be happy,” Lawrence Saint-Victor tells Soaps.com, “so if Thomas were to come back and she was like, ‘That’s the love of my life,’ I don’t think Carter would stand in the way of that.

“He respects Thomas,” he adds, “and considers him a friend.”

Would Thomas join him on the high road if he caught a glimpse of Hope in Carter’s arms? Or would the former rule-bender revert to his wicked ways? Since he got busted for faking a call to CPS to break up Ridge and Brooke, Thomas has walked the straight and narrow as if he’s never worn an outfit that wasn’t topped off by a halo. Would he risk being in good standing with his entire family to try to separate Hope and Carter? And to what end? Thomas is deliriously happy with Paris… or is he?