Disclaimer: I own nothing.

"Why yes…yes, she's doing well," James Watson talked into the red receiver, he watched fifteen month old Ashley Magnus half walk and half crawl around the floor with her beloved teddy bear in her hands. The bear was so old and so well loved that he was pretty sure it was Helen's when she was a girl; she laughed and babbled quietly as he continued to mumble into the phone.

He agreed to watch Ashley for a few minutes while Helen was on the phone, the three of them—well Ashley was coming whether she wanted to or not – wanted to go to the local park and get her out of the indoors for a bit.

Ashley's high pitched and girly giggle that all toddlers her age had, rang through the door into Helen's office and made Helen finish her phone call faster so she could spend the rest of the morning with Ashley and her dear friend James.

Helen hung up the phone, put back on the earring that was hurting her ear while the receiver was pressed against it, she put on her flat shoes that were now under the desk and took the few strides to get to her office door.

She leaned up against the door and watched the scene in front of her of her daughter bouncing on Watson's knee as he talked into a red phone receiver, she frowned, there wasn't a phone in the room that he was in and it didn't look like a cellular phone. Even if it was a cell phone, James 'I'm afraid of new technology' Watson wouldn't have one anyway.

"James?" she called gently, he jumped and hung up the phone.

"Ma!" Ashley squealed, slid off Watson's lap and ran to her mother and into Helen's arms. Helen kissed her cheek and watched James struggle and tried not to be embarrassed.

"Who was that on the phone?" he grumbled something, obviously embarrassed.

"What was that?" she sat beside Watson and recognized the red receiver as part of Ashley's sesame street play phone.

He rubbed his face and played with Ashley who was babbling softly to herself, "she…we were playing."

"Hmmm," she let Ashley slide off of her lap and watched her play "I see that. Who was on the phone?"

"I believe it was the furry blue monster named Grover," he huffed, can't believe he got caught doing something so beneath him like playing with a children's toy. Caught by Helen Magnus by all people.

She giggled, "And what did he have to say for himself?"

"You make fun; but you don't have to be a parent or the world's greatest detective, to know that when a kid passes you the toy phone to answer it. You answer it," he said it with such conviction that she almost stopped teasing him. Almost.

She smiled "I was just thinking on what Sir Arthur Conon Doyle would say if he could see his greatest detective talking to a Muppet on a phone to make a one year old happy."

"I'd want to see Doyle's face if we had to tell him what a phone is."

"Touché."

She kissed his cheeks. Leaned over and kissed his lips. Something that she never done before. "It was sweet;" she swallowed "I love the way you are with her, James."

Ashley gave him the teddy bear and he held on to it. He thought about the little family that they were slowly becoming.

He leaned back and studied the British woman in the light of the afternoon sun and smirked "you're going to tell Tesla about this aren't you."

"Hmmm." It wasn't a decisive answer, but he knew that Tesla would probably find out somehow.

"Damned phone," he sighed and put a sour look on his face.

He looked at the teddy bear in his hands that Ashley had given him to hold on to as she danced and played with something else that caught her attention; he looked up at the beautiful brunette with the grey-blue eyes and the smile that lit up his world.

That's when he realized, that he would answer any damned phone offered to him if he meant that he could make those two girls smile every day for the rest of his life.