He's the One by Linda Lael Miller

funny coming from you.”
    “What? Why? ”
    “You’re a cop. Your job terrifies me but I don’t tell you to change.”
    “I’m not the one who’s been shot at, kidnapped, stuffed in a trunk and a freezer, and nearly killed at every turn!”
    Slowly she shook her head. “I’m not going to do this, James, not again. I . . . can’t.”
    His heart began to thud hard and fast. “You said you were thinking about making a
     change. Was that just what you thought I wanted to hear?”
    “No, I meant it. But I’m not a quitter. I’m going to finish this case first. They
     made it personal now, and that pisses me off.”
    “See, that’s exactly what makes this so dangerous,” he said, feeling desperate. “You’ve
     got to get it through your head, El. With these guys, it’s not personal. It’s drugs.
     It’s drug money. It’s you getting in their way—”
    “They handcuffed me in my own home.”
    “Because you wouldn’t stay out of their way! Christ, El, just stay out of their way.”
    “And let the police handle it?”
    “Yes!”
    “And I just bet I know which cop wants to handle this for me.”
    “You’ve got that right.”
    They stared at each other, and right then, he knew. He’d blown it. She was going to
     go, and he couldn’t stop her.
    Sure enough, she grabbed her keys and stalked to the door.
    He snagged her wrist, pulled until she looked at him. “Don’t go,” he said quietly. Begging .
    But she tore free. “I have to. I have to do this for me.” She shut the door quietly,
     with a finality that frightened him more than anything else had.

Chapter Seven
    E lla knew what she had to do, but just in case, she made a list on the long, bumpy
     flight back to Los Angeles. She committed it to memory on the two-hour drive from
     Los Angeles to Santa Barbara:
    1. Get onto the Valeska and find something to nail my suspects.
    2. Switch departments to a safer investigative job that doesn’t involve being stuffed
     into any Dumpsters or getting handcuffed to towel racks, and as a result, live happily
     ever after.
    3. Without James.
    That last made her throat tight as she navigated the windy Highway 1, the summer-browned
     California hills on her right, the sparkling, whitecapped, azure Pacific Ocean on
     her left. She’d had months to get used to the idea of being without him, and in that
     time she’d learned to spend whole minutes without dwelling on it, but her heart just
     couldn’t wrap itself around the idea of this being permanent.
    Angrily, she swiped at a tear and told herself it’d been caused by the sun in her
     eyes. No more of this. She was her own woman, and didn’t need nor want a man who didn’t
     love her for all her little pieces and neuroses. It was all or nothing, damn it.
    And in any case, she didn’t have any tissues with her, so she sucked it up, parked
     in the marina, and slipped her binoculars out of her purse. She checked out the long
     rows of boats harbored. There were many, certainly more than a hundred, and they ran
     the gamut from small dinghies that hardly seemed seaworthy to party-sized catamarans
     and sailboats, to the multimillion-dollar yachts such as the ones she’d been investigating.
    She sought out the Valeska. She sat in her car and watched the boat carefully for ten minutes, and saw nothing.
     No maintenance, no guests, no movement at all. Hoping her luck had finally turned,
     Ella twisted into the backseat and grabbed her disguise: a white cap with a bobbling
     plastic pizza on it, and the pizza delivery box, which didn’t hold pizza but her Mace,
     tape recorder, and ID, just in case. Once, she’d been arrested snooping around in
     a shipping yard because she hadn’t stowed her ID and couldn’t prove who she was. James
     hadn’t enjoyed bailing her out, or the crap he’d taken for it from his station, but
     he’d enjoyed teasing her about it later.
    Not this time.
    Taking a deep breath, she shoved him out of her mind, exited the car, and