Page 1 of Flippin' Cowboy
Chapter 1: Geoff and Winnie’s Dream Wedding
Seattle, Washington
Friday, November 9
This was supposed to be the happiest day of Winter Snowberry’s life.
Instead, she was wearing shoes that pinched her toes and blistered her heels, a hideous designer wedding gown she hadn’t picked, and was facing an array of TV cameras and a crowd of five hundred guests, most of whom she didn’t know.
Worst of all, her fiancé, Geoff, was missing.
“When I told Geoff he’d be late to his own wedding, I meant it as ajoke,” Winnie muttered to her older sister, Autumn.
Winnie stood on a high dais at the front of a grand, nondenominational university chapel, along with the minister and the wedding attendants. These included Winnie’s brother, Spring, and her sisters, Summer and Autumn, as well as Geoff’s three brothers.
Together, they faced rows of pews crowded with increasingly restless people. The buzz of conversation rose as the minutes ticked by with agonizing slowness.
Where is he?Winnie thought, trying to conceal her anxiety in front of hundreds of people who were watching her every move.
She recognized maybe a fifth of her wedding guests, and some of those only because they were fellow celebrities on HomeRenoTV.
When Winnie and her longtime business partner, Geoff Schaefer, had gotten engaged last year, their producer, Karla Jones, and the executives at HomeRenoTV’s The Renovation Channel had insisted that this season of Winnie and Geoff’s hit show,Restoring Seattle, should be centered on Winnie and Geoff renovating their “dream home” while counting down to their Big Day.
Winnie had been ambivalent about having her wedding filmed for TV. But she felt she couldn’t really argue against Karla and Geoff’s insistence that they jump on the opportunity to film what could be their most popular season ever.
What Winniehadn’tcounted on was losing control over every aspect of the wedding planning, right down to the extremely uncomfortable and unflattering gown she was currently wearing. It had been created for her by an up-and-coming designer who had won the “Geoff and Winnie’s Dream Wedding” competition on The Renovation Channel’s sister channel, The Fashion Channel.
She’d also wanted to get married at her childhood church in her hometown of Snowberry Springs, Montana. That location had been nixed in favor of this huge, impersonal chapel in Seattle,with its ornate wooden columns, gilded plasterwork, soaring ceilings, and large seating capacity.
Even the “dream home” she and Geoff had just spent months renovating on camera was anything but.
Winnie had always dreamed of living in one of Seattle’s famous and historic Jud Yoho Craftsman homes. But Karla, Geoff, and Geoff’s design assistant, Melanie, had all insisted on selecting a huge Tudor Revival home because it was grander and more photogenic for a “dream home” project.
Both Geoff and Melanie professed themselves in love with the house. Karla had raved how fantastic the large downstairs rooms looked on camera. So, Winnie had smiled and nodded, and done her best to be a good sport about it.
After all, she was the one who’d dreamed of having her own show on The Renovation Channel, right? And she could always buy the next Yoho Craftsman that came on the market and restore it on a future season of the show, then keep it.
She and Geoff were currently the hottest reno show couple on TV, andRestoring Seattlehad just been renewed for a fifth season. Not only that, but Geoff had recently signed a deal for a line of signature home furnishings. They were both in high demand for TV and magazine interviews.
Winnie was overjoyed that Geoff’s talent and hard work were finally being recognized. They had both worked their butts off for years to make that dream a reality. And now, their dream had come true.
In the beginning, media attention focused on Winnie because of the rarity of female general contractors on TV. Back then, critics regularly savaged Geoff’s design decisions, especially when heattempted to give historic home interiors a more contemporary flair.
Winnie favored restoring a period-appropriate look and feel to historic homes. But, as Geoff liked to remind her, she wasn’t a trained designer like he was. Her role in their partnership and on the show was to wrangle the subcontractors and trades to make his designs a reality.
She never expected that the more successful they became, the less satisfying her life would be. Maybe it was because every important moment was now considered camera fodder, even Geoff’s “surprise” proposal at Thanksgiving last year.
Winnie liked to joke in her weekly phone calls to her family that Karla and Melanie were practically her sister-wives. But it was true. She wasn’t permitted to make any renovation or wedding-related decisions without their input these days, whether it was wallpaper or a wedding gown.
Summer poked Winnie’s arm, jolting her out of her self-pitying train of thought. “Your wedding planner looks like she’s about to pass out,” she whispered.
Winnie looked down and saw a frazzled Edwina push aside a camera operator blocking the chapel’s wide, rose petal-strewn center aisle. The tall woman, dressed in a tawny silk blouse and dark brown slacks, stalked up the dais steps.
“Whereishe?” she hissed, her steely blue glare landing on Winnie. “Have you heard anything from him?”
No need to specify the “him.”
Acutely aware of all the cameras and eyeballs focused on her, Winnie forced a smile and shook her head. “I don’t have my phone on me.”
