4
Seven Days until Christmas Eve
Sixty-Three Hours until Takeoff
Fifty-Four Hours until Takeoff
Vicki Lewis Thompson
Because NYT bestselling author VICKI LEWIS THOMPSON lives in the Arizona desert, she hardly ever has a white Christmas, but she always celebrates an enchanted one. Elves and flying reindeer make perfect sense to someone who’s lucky enough to write love stories all day. Vicki’s writing career has gifted her with several awards and a magickal connection to readers around the world. With the life she has, how can she doubt the existence of Santa Claus? Connect with her at www.vickilewisthompson.com, www.facebook.com/vickilewisthompson and www.twitter.com/vickilthompson.161
To the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pens—Andrea Laurence, Rhonda Nelson and Kira Sinclair. We’ve been to Dublin, London and Paris together, but I’m still partial to Gingerbread, Colorado!
INTERNAL MEMO: Christmas countdown, minus 20 days
FROM: Cole Evergreen, CEO, Evergreen Industries
TO: All staff
Thanks to centuries of intel monitoring, the North Pole is widely accepted as the home of Santa Claus. That misinformation has allowed the Winter Clan, under the guise of Evergreen Industries, to operate undetected in Gingerbread, Colorado, as we employ our magick in the service of Christmas.
But magick has its limits, and computer technology is more efficient for information storage and retrieval. Because of the sensitive nature of our database, specifically the “Naughty or Nice” list, our security system is constantly being updated.
However, I regret to inform you that despite our best efforts, we’ve been hacked. While I investigate the source of this breach, be advised that your current usernames and passwords are invalid. When you create new ones, use the strongest possible codes. Failure to maintain secrecy is not an option.
The memo, as Cole had expected it would, brought his three siblings to his office on the fifteenth floor of the Evergreen Industries building within minutes. It was the tallest structure in Gingerbread, and also the deepest. Besides having fifteen floors aboveground to house Evergreen’s Christmas ornament business, it had five subterranean floors dedicated to the secret task of Christmas toy production.
Ethan, Cole’s next oldest brother, arrived first with a typically optimistic attitude. There was a reason Ethan had been put in charge of Christmas cheer. Ethan was the sort of wizard who, if he found a box of horse manure under the Christmas tree, would look around for the pony.
“It was a fluke.” Ethan commandeered one of the two leather swivel chairs in front of Cole’s desk. “I’ll bet it was a total accident and they won’t be back.”
“They knew exactly what they were doing. They left me a message.” A message that had made his pulse leap when he realized who had been prowling through his database.
“What message?” Belle, the youngest Evergreen, walked in carrying a mug of coffee, because she had to be different. Everyone else in the company drank cocoa.
It must have been an emergency ration she’d brewed herself, because it clearly hadn’t come from Cup of Cheer, her favorite coffee shop in Gingerbread. She claimed that the stress of her job as head of human (and elf) resources, especially her work with Santa, Mrs. Claus and the elves, required large quantities of caffeine, specifically double-shot peppermint lattes.
Belle grabbed the other swivel chair and glanced at her brothers, eyebrows raised. “What’s the deal?”
“Whoever hacked into the database left a message,” Ethan said. “Can you trace where it came from, Cole?”
“Don’t have to. I know who it is.” A memory of Taryn from ten years before, her slender body naked and willing beneath his, scorched a path through his brain. He ignored it.
“That’s great!” Ethan looked even more encouraged. “So you can nip this in the bud, right?”
Oh, yeah. Even after ten years, Cole remembered nipping, and tasting, and... He banished that memory, too, and propped his hips on the edge of the desk. “Sort of. I’m planning to—”
“I see we’re all here.” Dash, two years younger than Ethan, sauntered into the office, followed closely by Noelle Frost, who’d recently come back to Gingerbread to head up company security while her father recovered from a health scare.
Dash and Noelle were exes, which made her return problematic and their working relationship tricky. Dash was in charge of elf transportation and Christmas magick, including Santa’s sleigh and flying reindeer. Noelle had to make sure the sleigh was properly cloaked to avoid detection by military radar and civilian air traffic controllers. Dash and Noelle had no choice but to cooperate on sleigh duty, whether they wanted to or not.
Cole couldn’t worry about their issues today. But he noted with some amusement that a love seat positioned against the wall was the only place left to sit. Noelle eventually took it and Dash chose to stand, leaning against the opposite wall, arms crossed.
Ethan turned his chair to face them. “Cole just said he knows who hacked into the database. That means we’re halfway to solving the problem.”
“Not