Santa’s Holiday Spectacular (Santa’s Crew #4)

Prologue

Four Friends—Santa’s Crew

F rankie Cappella, Nina Hunter, Amy Blanchard, and Rachael Newmark were best buds at Ridgewood High School, in an upscale area of North Jersey, approximately thirty minutes outside of New York City.

As with many friends, each went their separate ways after graduating, in search of fulfilling their dreams.

Ten years later, during their high school reunion, they easily became reacquainted, recalling their antics during class plays, where Nina acted, Frankie sang, Rachael danced, and Amy was the stage manager.

After college, Frankie moved to New York City to begin a career in publishing; Nina left for Los Angeles to pursue acting; Amy, the brainiac, eventually got her PhD and became an associate professor at Stanford; and Rachael got married, had a son, got divorced and started a dance studio, and was in constant search of a boy toy.

While their personalities were distinctly different from one another, the friends shared many other traits.

They were bright, talented, ambitious, and passionate.

All four had a deep affection for animals—a trait Frankie felt very strongly about.

Within the first half hour of the reunion, the four women recounted the milestones and the mishaps of the last decade.

Frankie had lamented about the corporate climate; Nina confirmed the difficulties of Hollywood; Amy bemoaned her feelings of confinement; and Rachael—well, Rachael always had something going on with a man or two.

They discovered another thing they had in common was that none of them had a serious significant other, including Rachael.

That’s when they made a pact that if they didn’t have dates for the forthcoming New Year’s Eve, they would do the unthinkable: go on a singles cruise to the Caribbean.

The cruise proved fruitful, and each of them found romance—some at sea, and some upon returning home.

Frankie began a relationship with Giovanni, who owned a restaurant with his brother in her neighborhood.

He had looked after Bandit, Frankie’s kitty, while she was away on the cruise, and his genuine care for her fur-baby softened her heart.

Nina met a successful lawyer named Richard Cooper, who lived and worked in Philadelphia, which wasn’t terribly inconvenient, since she was moving back to New York.

Amy had literally bumped into Peter Sullivan on the cruise, and he became her good buddy on the trip.

The problem she faced was their geographical distance.

She was in California, and he was in Boston.

But as luck would have it, she was offered a position at MIT and moved her fur-family of two kitties east. Rachael, the dancing diehard, began a relationship with Henry Dugan, a world-renowned choreographer.

Each year, he cruised the Caribbean teaching dance lessons to the ship’s guests.

The ten-year difference in their ages didn’t seem to matter. At first.

The following year, Frankie had a falling-out with Rachael but didn’t want to slight her, so she depended on the other gals to let Rachael know they were planning another adventure the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

Amy had an interview back at Stanford, and Nina had some business in Los Angeles, so they decided to meet in one of the most beautiful settings in the country: Lake Tahoe.

Rachael had gone radio-silent, and it was unknown if she was going to join them, so the threesome made their travel plans accordingly.

Frankie, being Frankie, made sure there was room for Rachael should she decide to meet them there.

The week after Christmas, Frankie, Nina, and Amy met in South Lake Tahoe, but Rachael’s presence was yet to be determined.

It wasn’t until Frankie went missing that everyone in her orbit, including Rachael, gathered at the shores of the magnificent lake to find their friend.

It was a reunion that bested their first, and Rachael found a new friend in Randy, a flamboyant and hilarious gay man.

For their third adventure, the girls and their significant others (well, in Rachael’s case, her plus-one was Randy) embarked on a trip to Italy with their final destination in Salerno, where Giovanni’s mother Rosevita and his Aunt Lucia lived in the family home.

Giovanni was intent on getting his hands on his mother’s well-kept secret recipe for panettone, Amy made a side trip to Geneva to see the Hadron Collider, Nina met a colleague in Milan, while Randy and Rachael stirred up the streets of Rome.

After three holidays of exhausting fun, the women decided to stay closer to home this year.

Amy and Peter were going to spend Christmas with her father and his new wife, Nina’s parents were coming up from Florida, Rachael still lived in Ridgewood, and Frankie was settled in New York.

With plenty of activities in the city that never sleeps, Frankie—Ms. Bossy Pants to her friends—was determined to make plans for everyone to enjoy.

The Sisters of the Sisterhood

In the basement of an old farmhouse in Virginia is a War Room that would rival the Pentagon.

It serves as the headquarters for a group of women who provide justice when the system fails.

Myra Rutledge, heir to a candy company fortune, and her childhood friend, Countess Anna De Silva, are the masterminds of the league of vigilantes.

Myra’s husband, Charles Martin, is a former MI6 operative, who—along with Annie’s other half, Fergus Duffy, the former head of Scotland Yard—work behind the scenes providing technical support and more, including Charles’s culinary skills.

The Sisterhood began when Myra’s daughter Barbara, and Barbara’s unborn child, were killed by a driver who was never prosecuted because of diplomatic immunity.

Myra vowed that she would do whatever she could to help other women who were denied their day of reckoning.

Over the years, Myra and Annie have taken on corporate frauds, kidnappers, money-launderers, human traffickers, drug runners, rapists, and child molesters.

Several of the women who had been wronged and redeemed became part of the alliance.

Kathryn Lucas was the first. Her husband, Alan, had multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease.

As his condition became worse, they left their engineering jobs and took to the highways.

Kathryn worked as a long-haul trucker so Alan could enjoy the adventure of being on the road and seeing the country.

One night at a truck stop, Kathryn was raped by three bikers while her husband was forced to watch.

After he passed away, Kathryn became Myra and Annie’s project, dishing out the revenge the bikers deserved.

Kathryn maintains the big rig and continues to work as a long-distance driver.

Yoko Akia’s mother had been duped into a relationship with a movie star when she was fifteen.

His brutality ended the woman’s life, but his stardom kept his vile secrets from the public.

It was the sisters who changed all that, including his face.

Yoko now owns a nursery and is a highly regarded florist. She is also an expert in martial arts and well-trained in killing without a trace. She is the ninja of the group.

Alexis Thorn was an extraordinarily successful broker until she was imprisoned for fraud, set up to take the fall for Wall Street scammers.

Once again, the Sisters took care of the problem.

Alexis, a beautiful, tall, woman of color, is also an expert in disguises, a talent that comes in very handy during their operations.

Isabelle (Izzie) Flanders, an architect, also had her run-in with the law, but not because of any wrongdoing.

She was framed by a coworker who manipulated a car accident to make it appear that Izzie was drunk; the accident resulted in the deaths of three people.

With the help of the Sisterhood, Izzie was exonerated and regained her architectural license.

She also has a hobby: computer hacking, trained by her husband Abner.

The group regularly enlists the investigative eye of Maggie Spritzer, a crackerjack reporter who works for Annie’s newspaper.

Why do you need to know all of this? Because although the two groups had never met, circumstances beyond their control—something none of them relished—would propel both teams of women to embark on a new adventure of righting a few wrongs.