Give My Heart to Kaitlyn (2nd in Outlaw Series)

Chapter Two

"I miss January in Texas." Marston grumbled as he pulled his coat tighter around himself and brought the cart to a stop outside the doctor's office on the outskirts of Windfall. Kaitlyn nodded.

"Me too." she agreed as she tugged the edges of her bonnet around her cold reddened cheeks and then folded her gloved hands tight in her lap.

"You all just need to toughen up is all." Langly said with a grin and Kaitlyn glared at him but said nothing. Langly was one year younger than her own seventeen years and he thought of himself as being all grown up. Much to his own irritation he had never outgrown his freckles and he had kept their mama's bright red hair. He was a little over six feet tall but he was all arms and legs and very gangly. He liked to imagine he was tough and manly and despite the way he seemed to so easily get on her nerves, she loved her brother.

"You're right, kid." Marston replied dryly as he jumped from the cart and walked to the other side of the seat. He took Kaitlyn by her tiny waist and lifted her off, setting her gently on her feet. "Not a single thing tough about me." Kaitlyn smiled at her pa. She knew he was joking. He was the single toughest man that she knew.

He had saved her life when she'd been young and he was the only man that she truly trusted. Everything about him was rough. His hands, his voice, the way he walked… everything oozed danger and power. Yet she knew that when it came to taking care of his family he was the softest and most caring man that God had ever created. She would never tell him that though…. She knew that would only cause him to complain that his stomach was hurting.

"I'll see you in a couple of hours, pa." Kaitlyn said as she stepped up onto the doctors porch. Marston nodded as he pulled himself back up onto the cart and Langly climbed up into the seat from the back.

"Langly and I won't be working long. Your mama will worry if we aren't home a good hour before dark."

"We're grown men, pa, we don't have to worry about rushing home like mama wants."

"Spoken like a young man who truly has no idea." Marston replied with a grin. Kaitlyn listened to them go back and forth as her pa drove the cart away. She turned and was about to grab the handle of the worn wooden door when it was jerked open and Doctor Rankin was standing there looking exhausted. His gray eyes lit up though when he saw her and he ran his hand through his graying black hair.

"Thank goodness you're here!" he exclaimed. "What a night I had last night and what a morning this morning! Two births in the middle of the night, a lung infection in a toddler and then I get back to the office to find Paul Sanchez at my door with a nearly dead man who'd been shot and nearly frozen to death."

"Where's the man?" Kaitlyn asked as she stepped into the parlor and removed her bonnet, gloves and coat. As always the doctors home was warm as he kept fires going in every room. He said there were too many sick folk that came in and out to let air have a chill. She smoothed out the skirt of her brown wool dress and folded her hands in front of her.

"He's in the patient room. I was just about to go about removing the bullet and I was hoping you'd show up soon." Kaitlyn nodded and rolled up the sleeves of her dress. She grabbed her white apron from the hook by the patient room door and slid it over her neck. She walked into the patient room, not sparing a glance at the man in the bed as she washed her hands in the basin.

This is what she loved. She longed to be a doctor, to make a difference and help others, but no one would ever accept a woman doctor in this day and time so she settled for helping out the doc and he really seemed to appreciate her being around.

"So the Masterson's and McKinnley's both had their babies last night?" Kaitlyn asked as she dried her hands on a towel.

"Yes." Doctor Rankin replied as he laid out some tools on the small table beside the bed the patient was lying in. "Two bouncing baby boys."