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“No, I’ve got it, thanks.”
    He followed her out of the eating area and around the side of the building to a small parking lot. She approached a minivan, which sat in a handicap space. “This is mine.”
    Joe placed his hand on the back of the chair. Though he was reeling over what she’d told him, or maybe because of it, he didn’t want to be alone with the information she’d given him. He needed more contact with her. So he did what he was good at to get what he wanted. He flirted. “Care to give an injured cop a ride home? I can’t drive yet.”
    Glancing anxiously at the van, she said, “If you want me to.”
    She fished a remote out of her purse, pressed a button, and Joe heard the locks click. She used it again and the back-passenger door slid open. She hit the command a third time and a ramp lowered from the car to the blacktop. The floor must be altered in the vehicle because the incline wasn’t too bad. He noted there were no seats in the back or the driver’s position. Only one for a passenger was in place. They hadn’t had vans equipped like this for daily use when his dad was sick, and traveling anywhere with him had been a nightmare.
    Dana had put on fingerless gloves—he’d seen those before—and wheeled up the ramp. His fists curled as she maneuvered herself. The urge to help her was great. Standing by was foreign to him. If he did indeed date her, that trait was going to be hard to control. His first instinct would be to make things easier for her by doing whatever task she needed done, and she’d made it clear that she wanted self-sufficiency. His mom had told him his father had been adamant about being independent for as long as he could. But the helplessness Joe felt about his dad’s condition had been frightening and frustrating and he was feeling a modicum of that emotion now.
    After she’d positioned herself in the driver’s side, Joe slid onto the front seat.
    She glanced over at him, her brows knitted. “You sure you want to ride with me? Some people don’t feel safe with all this equipment. With me driving.”
    Joe knew he didn’t want to be lumped into that group. He always thought of himself as open-minded. More than Spence and maybe even Cole. So he winked at her. “I been in harrowing car chases, darlin’. I think I can handle you at the wheel.”
    She smiled at him. It was a beautiful, sunny smile that shot to his nerve endings. All of them. It was amazing—in the midst of the shock and sadness he was feeling at her confession, she’d turned him on with just one look!
    “Where to?” she asked.
    “Crittenden Drive. It’s over by—”
    “Strong Hospital. I know. I’ve made myself well acquainted with the city streets of Rockland. I like to have as much control over my environment as I can get.”
    “Yeah, I guess everybody does.” He pointed to the console between them. “How do you do the gas pedal and brakes?”
    Grasping on to one of the protruding sticks, her fingers curled around its rounded top. “This is the brake, the other’s the gas pedal. They’re specially designed to minimize the amount of pressure I have to exert to work both of them.”
    “Dana, do you have any feeling in your legs?”
    “From the knees up I do.”
    He nodded. That was good. Very good, for a lot of reasons, the biggest one being that she would be sexually functional.
    She drove carefully, but not slow enough to be a nuisance to other motorists. He imagined the notion of a car accident terrified someone without the use of her legs. He bet after the accident that she was terrified much of the time. She was lovely, sweet, sincere and sensitive, and she’d had this horrible thing happen to her. When he finally let in his emotional reaction to her situation, it just about broke his heart.
    He cleared his throat. “Do you live in the city?” he asked.
    “No. My house and studio are in Fairfield.” A nice suburb twenty minutes from where Joe lived. “We really like it there.