Page 82 of Flippin' Cowboy
Winnie wondered what was up with her notoriously grumpy boyfriend. She’d caught him smiling in her direction all morning whenever he thought she wasn’t looking. It was sweet… but also kind of weird.
Maybe he’s just ecstatic that this is Geoff’s final day in Snowberry Springs, she thought. Her ex was flying back to Seattle tonight. In fact, he’d be departing for the Bozeman Airport as soon as they finished filming the reveal.
The past five months had flown by in a whirl of activity as Winnie and Nick raced to complete their restoration of the inn and the spa pavilion.
Despite her fears, things had gone smoothly after Geoff’s insertion into their project.
Off camera, Nick was coolly polite to her ex. On camera, he was always extremely gracious in his segments with Geoff, which only made Geoff’s desperate attempts to grab the limelight more apparent. And more pathetic, too.
Still, all things considered, Geoff had been on his best behavior during his guest appearances onReviving Snowberry Springs. Probably because Karla turned out to be right about his lack of career prospects on the wholesome HomeRenoTV network.
Compounding his public image issues after Melanie filed for an annulment of their marriage less than a month after their courthouse wedding, a fresh scandal erupted in late January.
Two weeks after Geoff maneuvered his way onto Winnie and Nick’s show, someone—probably Melanie—released a video of him and another woman sharing a heated kiss at one of Seattle’s trendiest clubs. The date stamp was November 19, just two weeks after his wedding.
The snarky sticker overlay on the video read, “When he tells you he’s working overtime on a special project at the office.”
The video instantly went viral. Geoff’s public approval ratings, already low, hit rock bottom.
And the celebrity gossip sites instantly changed their stories.
Instead of harping on what terrible things the ambitious and controlling Winnie must’ve done to drive her hapless groom into the arms of another woman, the headlines now read, “Geoff Schaefer—serial cheater unmasked! The sad truth behind the hearts he broke. Shocking new revelations about how he two-timed Winnie while deceiving Melanie!!”
For her part, Melanie played the innocent victim card for all she was worth. She hired the best PR person she could, and quickly began representing herself as a good, caring person who’d been duped by a master manipulator.
The tactic worked. She escaped the storm of condemnation that drowned Geoff and actually boosted her career.
One month after the video surfaced, The Renovation Channel announced plans for her to star inDesign 911, where she would rescue hapless homeowners from their self-inflicted design or renovation disasters.
Winnie mostly tried to ignore the drama as it unfurled. She passed the remaining winter months in a golden glow of happiness, doing the job she loved with the man she loved at her side. She spent her days busily restoring the inn, and her nights and weekends with Nick.
Only Autumn’s wickedly gleeful updates on The State of Geoff, shared during the Snowberry family’s Sunday dinners, kept her up-to-date on her ex’s life.
And today, finally, the big day had come. The goal they’d spent the past six months working towards. It was Reveal Day.
Despite several hiccups in the supply chain and a near-disaster when a backhoe excavating a new drainage system for the hot spring pool hit a sewage line and shattered the century-old terracotta pipe, Winnie’s crew had completed all the construction work on The Soiled Dove Inn at the beginning of the week.
Once the temporary tool sheds, assorted bits of machinery, and piles of disassembled scaffolding had been removed, a landscaping team from Bozeman took over.
They spent five days frantically digging, trimming, and planting to restore the inn’s Victorian garden, complete with paved walkways lined with low hedges of English lavender, beds featuring a variety of colorful annuals— bachelor’s buttons, begonias, cosmos, delphiniums, foxglove, hollyhocks, phlox, sweet pea, verbena,andzinnias—and, of course, heirloom roses.
Meanwhile, Winnie, Nick, Geoff, and their staging crew labored inside the building, unrolling antique carpets, moving furniture, arranging knickknacks, and putting the finishing touches on each room.
This morning, Jake and his assistant camera operators had filmed each room from every angle for the “Grand Reveal” season finale episode.
As part of the pre-reveal filming schedule, Geoff, Nick, and Winnie each introduced a different area of the house, talking about any special challenges or highlights during the restoration.
Nick had explained how he used the architectural drawings to recreate the house’s original porch with its ornate trim and slender turned columns. Winnie described all of the modern amenities they included, as well as her team’s painstaking restoration of the original entry hall tiles after the asbestos flooring installed over them were removed.
And Geoff, of course, took full credit for the library-bar.
But if Nick didn’t mind Geoff’s shameless accomplishment-grab, then Winnie was willing to let slide, too. She was damn proud of what they’d all accomplished in six months. The ugly and once-decrepit Snowberry Springs Inn now looked amazing, and she couldn’t wait to show it to this afternoon’s guest of honor for the filmed “reveal” tour of the house—Grandma Abigail.
Her grandmother arrived after lunch, wearing a brand-new bright blue suit that matched her eyes. She was clearly giddy with excitement and impatient to see the inside of the freshly renovated inn.
The plan was to film Grandma Abigail’s reaction shots as she entered each part of the house on the tour, starting with the entrance hall.
She performed beautifully, looking genuinely awed each of the four times Karla had her walk with Winnie through the frontdoor and supposedly see the magnificently restored entrance hall and staircase for the first time.
