visions of sugar plums by janet evanovich

This is the first holiday novel and the first of the between the numbers series. Plenty of the same characters with a few new ones to add to the mix.
In this novel Stephanie needs to find her Failure To Appear before Christmas and she has not done any of her shopping  as of yet or bought her tree. she needs the money from this skip in order to pay for everything or she is going to be forced to put everything on the charge card which she can already just barely afford the minimum monthly payments .  She needs to Find Sandy Claws aka Sandor Clausen but seems to be having trouble. She went to the house he was sharing with Elaine but she hasn't seen him since that morning and she was too busy baking anyways.
What do you suppose she does with all the goods, if all she does is bake all day? 
She finally gets a lead from her parents house during dinner after having already checked his store and the small workshop behind it. Turns out there is an add in the paper for elves.
Now to make matters worse she has some hunky supernatural guy following her around . He is suppose to bring her Christmas cheer and has special talents that have yet to be seen beyond going poof in the blink of an eye and being able to open any lock by just turning the knob. She is telling everyone he is an alien.
After getting hung up on when calling about the ad. she enlist randy briggs, whom she had prior dealings with and is a little person. She offered to pay him if he would help and he agreed. When she shows up at the workshop after tailing him on the way to work when he won't disclose the locations, a riot starts with all the elves after her.
Still stumped as to her connection to what diesel is after, they start looking for a guy called ring. turns out the connection is the guy "ring" aka John Ring is her grandmother's new stud muffin as Grandma Mazur put it.
turns out her sister Valerie is pregnant again by her boyfriend who still lives with his mother and doesn't have much of an income unless you count the laundromat next door to his office.

In all this wacky mess it turns out to be a good Christmas, and Joe buys her a ring (non-engagement ).

who knows, maybe down the line she will get an upgrade to the real thing.