Flippin’ Cowboy by Ophelia Sexton
Chapter 1: Geoff and Winnie’s Dream Wedding
Seattle, WashingtonFriday, 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 a joke,” 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 Winnie hadn’t counted 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, and Restoring Seattle had 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 he attempted 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.
“Where is he?” 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.”
Her wedding gown didn’t have pockets, so Mom had volunteered to hold her phone. She and Dad were seated in the first pew, along with Grandma Abigail, and most of Winnie’s aunts, uncles, and cousins, as well as Summer’s fiancé and Autumn’s husband and son.
On Geoff’s side of the aisle, the long front pew seated his father, stepmother, and sisters-in-law, along with his young nieces and nephews.
When Winnie’s gaze met her mom’s, Mom shook her head. No messages, then.
“He’s probably just running late, like usual,” Winnie added, hoping Edwina wasn’t about to pass out in front of everyone.
Heck, Winnie hoped that she herself wouldn’t pass out. She hadn’t been able to take a deep breath since being sewn into her dress this morning.
Geoff was notorious for losing track of time and suddenly finding last-minute important things to do whenever he and Winnie were due to leave the apartment they shared. It drove her crazy, but his chronic lateness was usually in the fifteen-to-twenty-minute range.
Not an hour, like now.
“I’ve tried contacting him, like, ten times,” Karla interjected, coming up to stand next to Edwina. “Got sent straight to voicemail. I hope to God he’s okay and didn’t get into a car accident or something.”
Oh, great. Something else to worry about, thought Winnie.
Like a lot of girls, she’d spent her teenaged years daydreaming of her wedding day. Now that she was in the middle of it, she couldn’t wait for it to be over.
She reminded herself that this circus was the price she’d agreed to pay for her dream. And that she and Geoff could make it up to each other tonight, when they’d kicked off their shoes and were relaxing with a glass of champagne in front of a crackling fire in their honeymoon suite. She’d booked a long weekend stay for them at a beautiful alpine bed-and-breakfast in the scenic, Bavarian-themed town of Leavenworth.
Assuming he wasn’t currently being extracted from a crushed vehicle by the jaws of life, that was.
Winnie sighed. I’m sure he’s fine. Just running late, as usual. Everything will be okay as soon as he finally gets here.
And if today’s events hadn’t stressed him out too much, maybe Geoff would finally be in the mood to make love tonight.
Between their struggle to complete the renovations on the Tudor Revival before the wedding, and the wedding itself, it had been weeks since either of them had done anything but fall asleep when they went to bed. They were both running ragged.
“I’m sure he just got stuck in traffic,” Autumn said reassuringly. “I heard that there was an overturned big rig on 405 North.”
“But I’ll call him now,” Winnie said in her most reassuring tone. “And see if he answers when my caller ID pops up.”
The sounds of conversation swelled as she gathered up her enormous draped skirts and the long, pearl-embroidered satin train that caught on everything. She took her first step down the dais stairs.
Then a cacophony of notification sounds rose from the pews.
Winnie froze. Her stomach clenched and her heart began to race. This can’t be good, she thought, watching as the wedding guests dug in their pockets and purses for their phones.
Wide-eyed with panic, Karla sprinted over to her. “OMG! Geoff’s at the courthouse right now, and he’s marrying Melanie!”
She thrust her phone at Winnie.
Geoff’s doing what!? Her brain buzzing with mental static, Winnie stared down at the smiling faces of her fiancé, Geoff Schaefer, and his assistant designer, Melanie Harper.
With my soulmate at the King County Courthouse,the caption read beneath the next photo of Geoff and Melanie. In this shot, their backs were to the camera as they facing a smiling judge. Surprise! Just couldn’t go through with Winnie’s wedding circus. #RestoringSeattle #WinnieGeoffWedding #HappyAtLast
My wedding circus? Winnie thought incredulously. But I didn’t want any of this!
Never been happier, read the next photo in the sequence, which showed Geoff and Melanie kissing, their linked hands in frame displaying their wedding rings. The tags read #TrueLoveWins #WeddingDay #SchaeferDesigns
“I don’t need to see the rest of these.” Winnie didn’t recognize her own voice as she thrust the phone at her producer. “They’re happy. Yay for them.” Her voice rose. “But why the fuck couldn’t either of them have said anything before today?”
“That asshole probably wanted to make sure he got lots of views and reactions on his announcement,” Autumn, who was a social media marketing expert, commented acidly. “I always knew you were too good for him, Winnie.”
The babble rising from the wedding guests turned into a roar. Winnie saw people laughing, sharing their phones with each other, staring at her.
I’ve been left at the altar. The truth sank into her numbed brain. Un-fricking-believable.
Telling herself to keep it together in front of all the cameras pointed in her direction, she turned to Karla. “Well, this is going to be the most interesting season finale ever,” she began, trying to sound like her world wasn’t falling apart. “I—” Her voice broke.
Then, with the cameras rolling and five hundred guests gaping at her, Winnie burst into uncontrollable tears.
What had begun as the best day of her life had just turned into the most devastating.