Page 22 of Slap Shot Surprise
“Is it harder as you get older?” Realizing what I’d just asked, I shook my head. “Not that you’re old,” I said quickly. “You’re not. I mean, I don’t know how old you are, but you’re not old.”
He laughed. “It’s okay. I’m thirty-two, whichiskind of old for professional hockey.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Most careers only last about five seasons. Some are done in one.”
“Wow.” I sipped my champagne. “So you must be really good.”
“I’m pretty good,” he said, his grin sheepish and cocky at the same time.
“So how much longer will you play?”
“Hard to say. As long as my body holds up, I guess.”
“And then what?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve never really thought about it.” He shrugged. “Hockey is really all I know. It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do.”
“Do you want to stay in Chicago?”
“I’ll go wherever the game takes me.” He sipped his drink. “So tell me more about what you do. I don’t know anything about museums except that my parents dragged us around to a bunch of them when we took a vacation to Italy.”
“You didn’t enjoy them?”
“Not really. I confess, I was more interested in Italian girls than Italian art.” He swirled the whiskey in his glass. “In my defense, I was only sixteen at the time.”
“So now that you’re older, you’re into Italian art?” I teased.
“Definitely. Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphael—all the Ninja Turtles.” He grinned. “But those are the only ones I know.”
I laughed. “It’s okay. I definitely couldn’t name more than four hockey players. Actually I might be able to name only one.”
“Which one?”
“Gordie Howe.”
“Wow. You went for an oldie. But a goodie,” he added. “Especially if you’re a Detroit fan.”
“My dad has an autographed card. My brothers are always arguing about who should inherit it.”
He laughed. “Maybe it should go to you. Aren’t you the one who loves memorabilia?”
It made me smile to hear the artifacts I worked with described as memorabilia. “Yes.”
“Were you always like that, even as a kid?”
“I’m not sure I lovedartmuseums that much when I was a kid. I liked looking at things people used in everyday life better. And digging in the dirt to find them seemed like treasure hunting to me. I used to pretend I was Indiana Jones in the backyard,” I confessed. “I made such a mess, I think my dad was sorry he ever showed me those movies. But that’s how I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I even came up with my own name.”
He grinned. “Oh yeah? What was it?”
“Montana Swift,” I said, cringing a little. “And I had all kinds of adventures for her. There was Montana Swift and the Raiders of the Rosebushes, Montana Swift: Treehouse of Doom, and then there were a whole slew of Harry Potter crossovers, like Montana Swift and the Mystical Mudpie Shop. Ari liked to make mud pies,” I explained with a shrug, “so I had to work that in.”
His eyebrows rose. “Damn. All that my brothers and I did in the backyard was climb trees and beat the shit out of one another.”
“My brothers did a lot of that,” I said as a cool breeze caressed my shoulders. “I just always liked hunting for things and making up stories about them. So I decided todo it for a living, and it took me all over the world—and then right back here where I started.”
He tipped up his glass. “How’d that happen?”
