Exclusive Extract: Tangled Webs by Callie Coles
Tangled Webs is an inspiring romance about finding courage, healing and hope – perfect for readers looking for the next love story to lose themselves in, and the first book in Callie Coles’ Spinning Silks trilogy.
Isla Del Penta, Panama, New Year’s Day
Sage woke early after a long night of broken sleep. The rising sun’s rays, already strong, were glaring through the dilapidated wooden shutters of her bedroom window. Not yet ready to face the world, she kept her eyes tightly closed. Her dry throat constricted as she tried to swallow. Lifting a hand to her face, she gingerly traced the swelling around her left eye. She suspected that the delicate bone beneath the eyebrow was broken and knew that this time, she would leave.
The sound of gentle breathing reminded Sage she was not alone in the bed. Carefully so as not to wake him, she pulled the solid, comforting warmth of her three- year-old son towards her and encircled him gently with her arms. The tempo of Hal’s rhythmic, sweet breaths soothed her jangled nerves sufficiently for her to finally open her eyes. She turned onto her back and gently moved away from the sleeping child. She found that she was fighting to keep her breathing even, strung out and taut in every frightened sinew. Today was going to be fraught with complications. Her husband and his mother would make her escape from the island as difficult as possible. She had guessed that Santiago would not have slept in their bed last night – he rarely did any more – but she was apprehensive nevertheless and looked around the large room, which was somehow still elegant despite its shabby state. Reassured to find that she and Hal were alone, she let out another sigh into the warm and heavy air; one of relief this time, which she had not realized she had been holding in.
Young women all over the world had mourned when American playboy racing driver and renowned bachelor Santiago Deverill had married her. She knew that even now, people still envied her. They saw the nineteenth- century plantation estate set on this Pacific island with its hundred acres surrounding the grand but crumbling colonial mansion where she was raising their child, and immediately reached the conclusion that Sage Deverill must be happy. Happiness, however, had eluded Sage for the last four years.
Hearing the muffled squawks of her mother-in-law’s African grey parrot from the confines of its cage on the veranda below the window, Sage sat up cautiously and edged her way over to the side of the bed, taking care not to wake Hal, still peacefully sleeping. She hoped, as she swung her legs off the side of the bed, that she would have a chance to compose some semblance of a plan before he woke. She pulled on an old pair of denim cut- off shorts and a faded blue linen shirt that she had been wearing the day before, then swept her thick, tangled hair off her hot neck and tied it into a hurried plait. She bent down to pick up her espadrilles with one hand before grabbing her dark glasses from the dressing table with the other.
It was dawn, a quarter past six, and the temperature already felt as if it was up in the thirties. Sage felt the stifling, humid heat closing in on her as she stepped out into the stale air of the hallway. She yearned for a sharp, white, frosty English morning. A wave of homesickness crashed over her without warning, causing her to let out an involuntary sob. She clapped a hand over her mouth as though to trap in the grief. Squaring her shoulders and sucking in a deep, steadying breath, she padded purposefully across the polished teak floorboards on bare feet.
As she passed the mirror that hung in the gloom of the ornate upstairs landing, she paused at the sight of her reflection and winced; her green, swollen eyelid was casting a purple shadow over her high cheekbone like some sort of grotesque stage make-up. Carefully, she put on the glasses and crept downstairs.