Usual disclaimer, no rights to any characters..

By throwing lots of money at the project, the remodelling of the houses (above and below ground) and getting things back together was done in a month, all up, including the house purchases, it cost over $20 million, but that was brought back to a round $20 million once the other houses and the apartment were sold. They'd done a rethink on the fence thing, so now there was basically a perimeter fence that intersected the houses on both streets, but the back yard itself was a shared space between the 4 blocks, a large open area with a full sized pool, gardens and relaxing areas, plus room for ball games if that struck anyone's fancy. The front yards were open for the 4 houses to leave an open, inviting look to them.

The others settled into their houses and things got into a good rhythm, Emma and Molly came over at least once a week, if not more, to spend time with them, and play soccer in the yard. Josie and Bella would also come over regularly, sometimes bringing partners or family. It looked like Clan Carmichael had a home. With the bunker complex and in-house facilities, Clan Carmichael also had its primary base of operations established, because they'd installed more facilities there than they had in the office, so much of the time, the team worked from home rather than in the office.

Everyone was still effectively taking it easy when the houses were finished, they did projects and went into the office sometimes, but rarely, and some of those visits were to interview candidates for "receptionist" and "office manager" positions for Carmichael Industries, the General presented them with a number of candidates who were thinking of leaving the military or intelligence forces, with high enough clearances to hear most of what was discussed in CI, and excellent combat/operational records. They'd found while struggling through the operation where they were all flat out 24x7 that they did need personnel for general business functions, and the General knew that the people of CI were important enough that they merited extra protection. When they came down to the prime choices, Chuck recused himself from the selection, saying that Sarah and Casey were more qualified to make the selection, but really in the interests of keeping out of domestic issues. The best candidates for the roles were pretty brunettes, and he didn't want to think what his wife may do if he showed any partiality to another pretty brunette. Sarah looked at him with narrowed eyes as she agreed with Casey that Josie and Bella were by far the best choices, and that look made sure that Chuck understood that they'd discuss this when they were alone, oh joy. Josie and Bella's addition to the team meant that the gender balance was way off in CI, especially as Ellie was more of an official member of the team, now that she'd given up her non-research roles. Now they had Sarah, Mary, Carina, Alex, Ellie, Josie and Bella on the girls' team, and Chuck, Casey, Stefan and Jeff on the boys' team.

The follow up discussion was delayed all of 10 minutes or so. As they walked back into Chuck's office, Sarah closed the door behind her, came around to prop herself on the edge of his desk and nodded back to Casey's office where they'd been, asking "What was that?" Chuck started with the same line he'd used before, that Sarah and Casey were more qualified to gauge the protective capabilities of the candidates, then gave up and stopped, looking up at her he just said "Brunettes are still like a red rag to a bull with you, it's been years since I hurt you with those other women but you still get upset and react the same way, so I didn't care who we got as long as I didn't choose them, and make you upset." She looked at him, a little stunned, and tried to speak, eventually coming out with "You thought I'd be jealous if you chose them?" He stood and took her hands, pointing out that that was always the way it had gone up to now, she was the most beautiful woman in the world to him, and he'd never want anyone else, but ever since he'd screwed up and hurt her that way in the early days, whenever he looked at or talked to a woman who was a brunette, she'd reacted, badly. Therefore, he didn't want to be involved in the decision process if it was going to upset her, he was confident that she and Casey would choose the best person for the job, but he didn't want to be the one who appeared to choose someone that she may have issues with. He cocked his had to one side and asked her if he'd read that wrong this time? She just said "No" and burst into tears. He held her while she cried and whispered in her ear that he loved her. Eventually she stopped crying and started berating herself for being such a mess, but he just held her and said "You're MY mess, for ever more, and don't you forget it my love." After she settled down and was OK, she kissed him and went back to her office to work. When he went to open the door of his office, Casey looked a question at him and he nodded that it was OK.

Now that they had "office staff", the business as looking more normal, as there were no longer periods where no-one was in the office. The main driver, though, was to free up the rest of the team for the real work that they were engaged to do. Most of them got some of their in-house jobs off their plates as Josie and Bella took them on, which made things a easier all around.

Chuck, Sarah and Casey had at least one teleconference or business trip a week (usually more) to meet with the various government bodies around the world about new projects that they wanted CI to take on. Most of the jobs that they took on involved less than a week of work for one or two people, the biggest that they'd accept for a while was a month or two's work for three to four people, as they were all still trying to recover from the big joint operation. It looked like Carmichael Industries wasn't going to have any trouble getting enough work in, the real issue seemed to be keeping it down to a manageable level.

The majority of their jobs didn't involve any direct involvement for CI in any engagements that were part of the operation, much to the chagrin of some of the team members, so they set it up some of the time to let them be involved, Casey, Carina, Mary, Alex, Josie and Bella all had their hands up for those missions as they missed the action. Sarah looked like she wished she could be part of that sometimes, too, but stuck to their (her) agreement, so the only times she or Chuck were involved were when they were both in, and they usually did the more challenging and difficult jobs, rather than the big firefights that Casey and some of the others preferred. Ellie or Emma looked after the twins when they did this, or had to go on business trips, as luckily the fussy phase where they wouldn't be separated from their parents at all was past. Even Chuck had to admit that he enjoyed being in the field with Sarah sometimes, neither of them ever forgot that they had the twins at home, and that they had to be far more careful than they'd been previously, but the thrill of handling the situation and coming out victorious was something that never really went away for them. They did most of their work on-line, but the missions that they did go on together were like date nights for them. With that in mind, all of them, even Jeff and Stefan, were required to keep up a reasonable exercise regimen, along with martial arts training/practice and firearms training/practice, the first two more for health than defence, but the need to be able to defend themselves was still strong. Therefore, everyone in Clan Carmichael was trained to look after themselves to some degree.

One of their problems were a holdover from the days before the Quinn incident, they did want to be mostly out of the violent and dangerous side of the business, but events and adversaries kept pulling them back in, yes, it was exciting once in a while, but they had loved ones and families now, and the risk of losing them outweighed the excitement. That being said, even though they'd managed to take down the major enemies, there were still remnants of those organisations out there who had them targeted for payback for taking down their businesses. Therefore, they had people coming after them or trying to set traps for them on an all too regular basis, hence all the security measures and defence training, and their smarter adversaries knew how to set honey pots tailored to ensure that CI would be engaged. Generally when one of these was triggered, it would be set up so that people had to be on-site to extract the information being targeted (hardcopy documentation, multiple levels of security controls and/or air gap security controls that required someone on-site to get into the systems to extract the intel), and there'd usually be a far stronger security force on hand than records suggested, like that operation when Casey got sorta shot in the arm. Anyway the only way to stop the attacks against them would be to get out of the business altogether and disappear completely, but most of the Clan weren't really prepared to do that, so they still had to fight at times.

A/N: Given the nature of the "comments" that I've been getting on this chapter, this looks like the place to pack it in, don't know how I forgot how vicious some fans will get when anyone deviates from their view of how things were/would have gone. Should have remembered the wars over the finale.

NB: To the anonymous lowlife who tried to hide behind a "guest review" and post a very personal attack against me as "Glasshouse", as you made sure that I couldn't respond to you in private, you disgust me.