Page 6 of Date with a Devil
God help you if Thayer decided he didn’t like you, though. Not that Austen had to worry about that. He loved her work. It was Thayer who’d pushed so hard for Austen’s full-time promotion. Without him,Date with a Devilnever would have happened, and Austen would still probably be serving coffee.
“Morning, Thayer,” Austen said cheerfully as she entered his office and took the seat opposite his desk. “What’s up?”
Already a director at thirty-nine, Thayer was a rising star in the Dallas Devils organization, and almost always in a good mood. But whatever was on his desktop monitor had him looking annoyed and upset.
“What’s wrong?” Austen asked.
Thayer swiveled his monitor around, offering her a glimpse at the sports page of theDallas Morning Newswebsite. The headline read,
“FANS ARE IDIOTS”
“Oh God.” Austen grimaced. She didn’t need to ask which player was being quoted. It was always the same guy causing all the controversy. “Here we go again.”
“The biggest idiotin Dallas is Dane DeHardt,” Thayer hissed. “Now he’s attacking our fans? Everything about that man is so crude, so insulting. Even his nickname is problematic. The Big D? I mean,really? You realize that’s a joke about his supposed penis size, right?”
“Yes,” she said. Truthfully, though, Austen always figured his nickname was due to him being a statuesque specimen of a man who played in Dallas,alsoknown as ‘The Big D.’ But she knew better than to challenge her boss while he was on one of his DeHardt rants—of which there were many.
“Between you and me? That ‘Big D’ of his is vastly overrated. I should know. I’ve been in that locker room—it’s where I got my start, after all.” Thayer stamped his elbow onto his desk and gleefully held up a lone pinky finger. “Seriously, it’s like that big.”
“Thayer!” Austen quickly shielded her eyes from the sight. The thought of her boss’s finger being a symbolic penis wasn’t just mildly inappropriate, it was pretty gross. And since they all worked for the same company, wasn’t DeHardttechnicallytheir co-worker? Wasn’t he treading dangerously close to sexual harassment territory?
“Really,” Thayer insisted. “It is.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it. So what’s our plan?” she asked, hoping to nudge her boss into more productive waters.
“Honestly, I don’t even know anymore.” Thayer pulled off his glasses and rubbed his puffy eyes. “At this point, I just wish he were someone else’s problem. He obviously doesn’t even want to be here anymore.”
Austen wasn’t one to wallow in a crisis—she’d rather think of solutions. “Well, what was DeHardt’s full quote? Did he straight-up call our fans idiots, or is there some way we can spin his remarks so they don’t sound as bad?”
Thayer shook his head. “I can’t even deal with this right now, Austen. It’s Monday morning. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Oh, uh, okay. What’s up? How are you?”
“I’m good.” Thayer smiled at her, and all his frustrations seemed to vanish. He wasn’t a bad looking guy, but Austen always figured he’d be more handsome if he shaved his big, bushy beard. Otherwise, he fit the image of the hip, young professional—the thick-framed glasses, the cool sneakers, the messenger bag, the trendy suits that weremaybejust a size-too-small for his body. “Did you have fun the rest of your weekend?”
Austen smirked. “If ‘fun’ is another disappointing date with a guy from Tinder, then sure, I had tons of fun.”
“Oh, I doubt it could’ve been any more disappointing than one of your Devils dates.”
“You’d be surprised,” she said, and they both snickered.
Thayer loved poking fun at the athletes, orjock idiots,as he was fond of calling them. Yeah, he could be a little hard on the players at times, but Austen understood his gripes. Thayer was incredibly passionate about wanting to make the world a better place, and he thought that no one had more power and ability to do that than millionaire athletes—who all too often completely fumbled that great responsibility by acting like ignorant, entitled boneheads.
That was one of the main reasons Thayer was so enthusiastic aboutDate with a Devilin the beginning. In his eyes, the show was a great opportunity to teach these guys how theyshouldact around women. Maybe the athletes wouldn’t get the message—realistically, they were probably already a lost cause—but the young audience watching the show surely would.
“Oh.Oh!” Thayer exclaimed, bolting upright with giddiness. “That’s it. I just got it. The solution to our problem.”
“What’s that?”
“Who is the most notable Dallas Devil that we’ve never had on the show?”
“… Dane DeHardt …” Austen muttered weakly.
“Which is kind of funny, considering it was DeHardt’s lack of enthusiasm for,ahem,oral reciprocity, that created the need for the show in the first place.”
Austen sank in her seat. “Thayer, please don’t ask me to do this. I could never do a show with him.”
“But that’s the beauty of it, Austen. He’ll never agree to it in the first place.”
